"Picard and Magloire, go and sit down at that desk.

I shall want you after the rest are gone." Saying this, Lomaque handed certain sealed and docketed papers to the other men waiting in the room, who received them in silence, bowed, and went out.

Innocent spectators might have thought them clerks taking bills of lading from a merchant.

Who could have imagined that the giving and receiving of Denunciations, Arrest-orders, and Death-warrants--the providing of its doomed human meal for the all-devouring guillotine--could have been managed so coolly and quietly, with such unruffled calmness of official routine?
"Now," said Lomaque, turning to the two men at the desk, as the door closed, "have you got those notes about you ?" (They answered in the affirmative.) "Picard, you have the first particulars of this affair of Trudaine; so you must begin reading.

I have sent in the reports; but we may as well go over the evidence again from the commencement, to make sure that nothing has been left out.