Every prisoner on trial, even the rudest peasant, knows that they begin by disarming him with irrelevant questions (as you so happily put it) and then deal him a knockdown blow, he-he-he!⁠—your felicitous comparison, he-he! So you really imagined that I meant by ‘government quarters’⁠ ⁠… he-he! You are an ironical person. Come. I won’t go on! Ah, by the way, yes! One word leads to another. You spoke of formality just now, apropos of the inquiry, you know. But what’s the use of formality? In many cases it’s nonsense. Sometimes one has a friendly chat and gets a good deal more out of it. One can always fall back on formality, allow me to assure you. And after all, what does it amount to? An examining lawyer cannot be bounded by formality at every step. The work of investigation is, so to speak, a free art in its own way, he-he-he!”