as if by magic and clearly without the aid of any of the accused or of Marthe, corroborated his previous argument.  Yesterday the prisoners could most surely rely on acquittal, and if they had, as the prosecution claimed, the power to hold or to release the senator, they certainly would not have released him until after their acquittal.  He endeavored to bring before the minds of the Court and jury the fact that mysterious enemies, undiscovered as yet, could alone have struck the accused this final blow.

Strange to say, the only minds Monsieur de Grandville reached with this argument were those of the public prosecutor and the judges.  The jury listened perfunctorily; the audience, usually so favorable to prisoners, were convinced of their guilt.  In a court of justice the sentiments of the crowd do unquestionably weigh upon the judges and the jury, and vice versa.  Seeing this condition of the minds about him, which could be felt if not defined, the counsel uttered his last words in a tone of passionate excitement caused by his conviction:—­

“In the name of the accused,” he cried, “I forgive you for the fatal error you are about to commit, and which nothing can repair!  We are the victims of some mysterious and Machiavellian power.  Marthe Michu was inveigled by vile perfidy.  You will discover this too late, when the evil you now do will be irreparable.”

Bordin simply claimed the acquittal of the prisoners on the testimony of the senator himself.

The president summed up the case with all the more impartiality because it was evident that the minds of the jurors were already made up.  He even turned the scales in favor of the prisoners by dwelling on the senator’s evidence.  This clemency, however, did not in the least endanger the success of the prosecution.  At eleven o’clock that night, after the jury had replied through their foreman to the usual questions, the Court condemned Michu to death, the Messieurs de Simeuse to twenty-four years’ and the Messieurs d’Hauteserre to ten years, penal servitude at hard labor.  Gothard was acquitted.

The whole audience was eager to observe the bearing of the five guilty men in this supreme moment of their lives.  The four gentlemen looked at Laurence, who returned them, with dry eyes, the ardent look of the martyrs.

“She would have wept had we been acquitted,” said the younger de Simeuse to his brother.

Never did convicted men meet an unjust fate with serener brows or countenances more worthy of their manhood than these five victims of a cruel plot.

“Our counsel has forgiven you,” said the eldest de Simeuse to the Court.

* * * * *

Madame d’Hauteserre fell ill, and was three months in her bed at the hotel de Chargeboeuf.  Monsieur d’Hauteserre returned patiently to Cinq-Cygne, inwardly gnawed by one of those sorrows of old age which have none of youth’s distractions; often he was so absent-minded that the abbe, who watched him, knew the poor father was living over again the scene of the fatal verdict.  Marthe passed away from all blame; she died three weeks after the condemnation of her husband, confiding her son to Laurence, in whose arms she died.