“In love!...  In love, as you were!” said, with scornful accent, the voice of Ferragut’s prudent counselor.

The periodicals were protesting against this delay in the execution of the sentence.  The name of Freya Talberg was beginning to be heard in conversation as an argument against the weakness of the government.  The women were the most implacable.

One day, in the Palace of Justice, the maitre Became convinced of this general animosity that was pushing the defendant toward the day of execution.  The woman who had charge of the gowns, a verbose old wife, on a familiar footing with the illustrious lawyers, had rudely made known their opinions.

“I wonder when they’re going to execute that spy!...  If she were a poor woman with children and needed to earn their bread, they would have shot her long ago....  But she is an elegant cocotte and with jewels.  Perhaps she has bewitched some of the cabinet ministers.  We are going to see her on the street now almost any day....  And my son who died at Verdun!...”

The prisoner, as though divining this public indignation, began to consider her death very near losing, little by little, that love of existence which had made her burst forth into lies and delirious protests.  In vain the maitre held out hopes of pardon.

“It is useless:  I must die....  I ought to be shot....  I have done so much mischief....  It horrifies even me to remember all the crimes named in that sentence....  And there are still others that they don’t know!...  Solitude has made me see myself just as I am.  What shame!...  I ought to perish; I have ruined everything....  What is there left for me to do in the world?...”

“And it was then, my dear sir,” continued the attorney, in his letter, “that she spoke to me of you, of the way in which you had known each other, of the harm which she had done you unconsciously.”

Convinced of the uselessness of his efforts to save her life, the maitre had solicited one last favor of the tribunal.  Freya was very desirous that he should accompany her at the moment of her execution, as this would maintain her serenity.  Those in the government had promised their colleague in the forum, to send opportune notice that he might be present at the fulfillment of the sentence.

It was at three o’clock in the morning and while he was in the deepest sleep that some messengers, sent by the prefecture of police, awakened him.  The execution was to take place at daybreak:  this was a decision reached at the last moment in order that the reporters might learn too late of the event.

An automobile took him with the messengers to the prison of St. Lazare, across silent and shadowy Paris.  Only a few hooded street lamps were cutting with their sickly light the darkness of the streets.  In the prison they were joined by other functionaries and many chiefs and officers who represented military justice.  The condemned woman was still sleeping in her cell, ignorant of what was about to occur.