Thus M. Galpin triumphed, and M. Gransiere had reason to be proud of his
eloquence. Jacques de Boiscoran had been found guilty.
But he looked calm, and even haughty, as the president, M. Domini,
pronounced the terrible sentence, a thousand times braver at that
moment than the man who, facing the squad of soldiers from whom he is to
receive death, refuses to have his eyes bandaged, and himself gives the
word of command with a firm voice.
That very morning, a few moments before the beginning of the trial, he
had said to Dionysia,--
“I know what is in store for me; but I am innocent. They shall not see
me turn pale, nor hear me ask for mercy.”
And, gathering up all the energy of which the human heart is capable, he
had made a supreme effort at the decisive moment, and kept his word.
Turning quietly to his counsel at the moment when the last words of the
president were lost among the din of the crowd, he said,--
“Did I not tell you that the day would come when you yourself would be
the first to put a weapon into my hands?”