"Do you want some dinner, yes or no?
Let them write down their nonsense." "You admit, of course, the condition of your clothes ?" said the justice of peace; "and you can't deny the words you said just now to Gothard ?" Michu, supplied with food by his wife, who was amazed at his coolness, was eating with the avidity of a hungry man.

He made no answer to the justice, for his mouth was full and his heart innocent.

Gothard's appetite was destroyed by fear.
"Look here," said the forester, going up to Michu and whispering in his ear: "What have you done with the senator?
You had better make a clean breast of it, for if we are to believe these people it is a matter of life or death to you." "Good God!" cried Marthe, who overheard the last words and fell into a chair as if annihilated.
"Violette must have played us some infamous trick," cried Michu, recollecting what Laurence had said in the forest.
"Ha! so you do know that Violette saw you ?" said the justice of peace.
Michu bit his lips and resolved to say no more.

Gothard imitated him.
Seeing the uselessness of all attempts to make them talk, and knowing what the neighborhood chose to call Michu's perversity, the justice ordered the gendarmes to bind his hands and those of Gothard, and take them both to the chateau, whither he now went himself to rejoin the director of the jury..