The magistrate¹ from Saigon saw his hopes fulfilled, and, thanks to his promotion², was commissioned to continue the trial which he had so ably commenced. After the jury had brought in their verdict of guilty, he sentenced Justin Chevassat, alias³ Maxime de Brevan, to penal⁴ servitude for life.  
Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, got off with twenty years; and the two Chevassats escaped with ten years’ solitary⁵ confinement⁶.
 
The trial of Thomas Elgin, which came on during the same term, revealed a system of swindling which was so strikingly bold and daring, that it appeared at first sight almost incredible. It excited especial surprise when it was found out that he had issued false shares, which he made Count Ville-Handry buy in, so as to ruin, by the same process, the count as an individual, and the company over which he presided. He was sent for twenty years to the penitentiary⁷.
 
These scandalous proceedings⁸ had one good result. They saved the poor count; but they revealed, at the same time, such prodigious⁹ unfitness for business, that people began to suspect how dependent he must have been on his first wife, Henrietta’s mother. He remained, however, relatively¹⁰ poor. They had made Thomas Elgin refund¹¹, and had even obtained possession of Sarah Brandon’s fortune; but the count was called upon to make amends¹² for his want of business capacity. When he had satisfied all his creditors¹³, and handed over to his daughter a part of her maternal¹⁴ inheritance, he had hardly more than six thousand dollars a year left.
 
Of the whole “band,” Mrs. Brian alone escaped.
 
Malgat, having surrendered to justice with the prescribed limits of time to purge¹⁵ himself, was tried, and the whole process begun anew. But the trial was naturally a mere¹⁶ form. His own lawyer had very little to say. The state attorney himself made his defense¹⁷. After having fully¹⁸ explained the circumstances which had led the poor cashier to permit a crime, rather than to commit it himself, the attorney said to the jury,—
 
“Now, gentlemen, that you have learned what was the wrong of which he is guilty, you ought also to know how he has expiated¹⁹ his crime.
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