With the detective he had rebelled against his unjust lot; but with the magistrate he seemed to bow, full of resignation, before a blind fatality.
With genuine eloquence and rare facility of expression, he related his feelings on the day following the discovery,--his grief, his perplexity, his doubts.
To support this moral certainty, some positive testimony was needed.
Could he hope for this from the count or from Madame Gerdy, both interested in concealing the truth?
No.

But he had counted upon that of his nurse,--the poor old woman who loved him, and who, near the close of her life, would be glad to free her conscience from this heavy load.

She was dead now; and the letters became mere waste paper in his hands.
Then he passed on to his explanation with Madame Gerdy, and he gave the magistrate even fuller details than he had given his old neighbour.
She had, he said, at first utterly denied the substitution, but he insinuated that, plied with questions, and overcome by the evidence, she had, in a moment of despair, confessed all, declaring, soon after, that she would retract and deny this confession, being resolved at all hazards that her son should preserve his position.
From this scene, in the advocate's judgment, might be dated the first attacks of the illness, to which she was now succumbing.
Noel then described his interview with the Viscount de Commarin.

A few inaccuracies occurred in his narrative, but so slight that it would have been difficult to charge him with them.

Besides, there was nothing in them at all unfavourable to Albert.
He insisted, on the contrary, upon the excellent impression which that young man had made on him.