The abbe at once inquired if she had other letters from her husband that he might compare the writing.  Marthe went to her home to fetch them and there found a summons to appear in court.  By the time she returned to the chateau the abbe and his sister had received a similar summons on behalf of the defence.  They were obliged therefore to start for Troyes immediately.  Thus all the personages of our drama, even those who were only, as it were, supernumeraries, were collected on the spot where the fate of the two families was about to be decided.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TRIAL

There are but few localities in France where Law derives from outward appearance the dignity which ought always to accompany it.  Yet it surely is, after religion and royalty, the greatest engine of society.  Everywhere, even in Paris, the meanness of its surroundings, the wretched arrangement of the courtrooms, their barrenness and want of decoration in the most ornate and showy nation upon earth in the matter of its public monuments, lessens the action of the law’s mighty power.  At the farther end of some oblong room may be seen a desk with a green baize covering raised on a platform; behind it sit the judges on the commonest of arm-chairs.  To the left, is the seat of the public prosecutor, and beside him, close to the wall, is a long pen filled with chairs for the jury.  Opposite to the jury is another pen with a bench for the prisoners and the gendarmes who guard them.  The clerk of the court sits below the platform at a table covered with the papers of the case.  Before the imperial changes in the administration of justice were instituted, a commissary of the government and the director of the jury each had a seat and a table, one to the right, the other to the left of the baize-covered desk.  Two sheriffs hovered about in the space left in front of the desk for the station of witnesses.  Facing the judges and against the wall above the entrance, there is always a shabby gallery reserved for officials and for women, to which admittance is granted only by the president of the court, to whom the proper management of the courtroom belongs.  The non-privileged public are compelled to stand in the empty space between the door of the hall and the bar.  This normal appearance of all French law courts and assize-rooms was that of the Criminal court of Troyes.

In April, 1806, neither the four judges nor the president (or chief-justice) who made up the court, nor the public prosecutor, the director of the jury, the commissary of the government, nor the sheriffs or lawyers, in fact no one except the gendarmes, wore any robes or other distinctive sign which might have relieved the nakedness of the surroundings and the somewhat meagre aspect of the figures.  The crucifix was suppressed; its example was no longer held up before the eyes of justice and of guilt.  All was dull and vulgar.  The paraphernalia so necessary to excite social interest