honest man."

He was right. Endowed with remarkable penetration, firm, unbiased, equally free from false pity and excessive severity, M. Patrigent possessed in an eminent degree all the qualities necessary for the delicate and difficult office of judge of instruction. Perhaps he was wanting in the feverish activity which is sometimes necessary for coming to a quick and just decision; but he possessed unwearying patience, which nothing could discourage. He would cheerfully devote years to the examination of a case; he was even now engaged on a case of Belgian banknotes, of which he did not collect all the threads, and solve the mystery, until after four years' investigation. Thus it was always to his office that they brought the endless lawsuits, half-finished inquests, and tangled cases.

This was the man before whom they were taking Prosper; and they were taking him by a difficult road. He was escorted along a corridor, through a room full of policemen, down a narrow flight of steps, across a kind of cellar, and then up a steep staircase which seemed to have no terminus.Finally he reached a long narrow galley, upon which opened many doors, bearing different numbers. The custodian of the unhappy cashier stopped before one of these doors, and said: "Here we are; here your fate will be decided." At this remark, uttered in a tone of deep commiseration, Prosper could not refrain from shuddering. It was only too true, that on the other side of this door was a man upon whose decision his freedom depended. Summoning all his courage, he turned the door-knob, and was about to enter when the constable stopped him. 

"Don't be in such haste," he said; "you must sit down here, and wait till your turn comes; then you will be called." The wretched man obeyed, and his keeper took a seat beside him. Nothing is more terrible and lugubrious than this gallery of the judges of instruction. Stretching the whole length of the wall is a wooden bench blackened by constant use. This bench has for the last ten years been daily occupied by all the murderers, thieves, and suspicious characters of the Department of the Seine. Sooner or later, fatally, as filth rushes to a sewer, does crime reach this gallery, this dreadful gallery with one door opening on the galleys, the other on the scaffold. This place was vulgarly and pithily denominated by a certain magistrate as the great public wash-house of all the dirty linen in Paris. 

When Prosper reached the gallery it was full of people. The bench was almost entirely occupied. Beside him, so close as to touch his shoulder, sat a man with a 

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