“At all events, M. Folgat is right. The whole matter is far from
being cleared up. The jury was long before they agreed. Perhaps M.
de Boiscoran would have been acquitted, if, at the last moment, M.
Gransiere had not announced the impending death of Count Claudieuse in
the adjoining room.”
M. Magloire and M. Folgat listened to all these remarks, as they heard
them in the crowd here and there, with great satisfaction; for in spite
of all the assertions of magistrates and judges, in spite of all the
thundering condemnations against the practice, public opinion will find
an echo in the court-room; and, more frequently than we think, public
opinion does dictate the verdict of the jury.
“And now,” said M. Magloire to his young colleague, “now we can be
content. I know Sauveterre by heart. I tell you public opinion is
henceforth on our side.”
By dint of perseverance they made their way, at last, out through the
narrow door of the court-room, when one of the ushers stopped them.
“They wish to see you,” said the man.
“Who?”
“The family of the prisoner. Poor people! They are all in there, in
M. Mechinet’s office. M. Daubigeon told me to keep it for them. The
Marchioness de Boiscoran also was carried there when she was taken ill
in the court-room.”
He accompanied the two gentlemen, while telling them this, to the end of
the hall; then he opened a door, and said,--
“They are in there,” and withdrew discreetly.
There, in an easy-chair, with closed eyes, and half-open lips, lay
Jacques’s mother. Her livid pallor and her stiff limbs made her look
like a dead person; but, from time to time, spasms shook her whole body,
from head to foot. M. de Chandore stood on one side, and the marquis,
her husband, on the other, watching her with mournful eyes and in
perfect silence. They had been thunderstruck; and, from the moment when
the fatal sentence fell upon their ears, neither of them had uttered a
word.
Dionysia alone seemed to have preserved the faculty of reasoning and
moving. But her face was deep purple; her dry eyes shone with a painful
light; and her body shook as with fever. As soon as the two advocates
appeared, she cried,--
“And you call this human justice?”