So  far,  all  was  well.  But  Michu's  examination  was  a  more
serious  matter,  and  closed  the  combat.  Everybody  now  un-
derstood why  M.  de  Granville  had  preferred  to  defend  the
servant  rather  than  the  masters.
Michu  admitted  having  menaced  Marion,  but  he  denied
absolutely  that  he  had  done  the  violence  threatened.  As  to
ambushing  Malin,  he  said  he  had  been  simply  promenading
the  park  ;  the  senator  and  M.  Grévin  might  have  been  afraid
when  they  saw  the  muzzle  of  his  gun  ;  they  might  have  be-
lieved it  to  be  a  threat  when  really  no  threat  was  intended.
He  observed  that  when  a  man  is  unused  to  the  handling  of  a
gun  he  always  thinks  it  is  pointed  at  him,  when  it  really  is
resting  only  on  the  shoulder.  To  account  for  the  state  of  his
clothing  when  he  was  arrested,  he  said  that  he  had  fallen  as
he  was  clambering  through  the  breach  on  his  way  home.
"  I  was  not  able  to  see  because  of  the  darkness  ;  in  a  fash-
ion," said  he,  "  I  clutched  at  the  stones  to  climb  up  the
breach,  when  some  of  the  loose  stones  came  tumbling  down
with  me."

As  to  the  cement  that  Gothard  was  carrying,  he  replied
now,  as  at  every  other  time,  that  he  needed  it  to  fasten  one  of
the  posts  on  the  hollow  path.
