After speaking thus with perfect self-possession and great volubility, Mademoiselle Leblanc sat down again amid a murmur of approbation, and they proceeded to read the letter which had been found on Edmee.

It was, indeed, the one I had written to her only a few days before the fatal day.  They handed it to me; I could not help pressing my lips to the stains of Edmee’s blood.  Then, after glancing at the writing, I returned the letter, and declared quite calmly that it was written by me.

The reading of this letter was my coup de grace.  Fate, who seems ingenious in injuring her victims, had obtained (and perhaps some famous hand had contributed to the mutilation) that the passages expressing my obedience and respect should be destroyed.  Certain poetic touches which might have furnished an explanation of, and an excuse for, my wild ramblings, were illegible.  What showed plain to every eye, and carried conviction to every mind, were the lines that remained intact, the lines that bore witness to the violence of my passion and the vehemence of my frenzy.  They were such phrases as these:  “Sometimes I feel inclined to rise in the middle of the night and go and kill you!  I should have done this a hundred times, if I had been sure that I should love you no more after your death.  Be considerate; for there are two men in me, and sometimes the brigand of old lords it over the new man, etc.”  A smile of triumph played about my enemies’ mouths.  My supporters were demoralized, and even my poor sergeant looked at me in despair.  The public had already condemned me.

This incident afforded the King’s advocate a fine chance of thundering forth a pompous address, in which he described me as an incurable blackguard, as an accursed branch of an accursed stock, as an example of the fatality of evil instincts.  Then, after exerting himself to hold me up as an object of horror and fear, he endeavoured, in order to give himself an air of impartiality and generosity, to arouse the compassion of the judges in my favour; he proceeded to show that I was not responsible for my actions; that my mind had been perverted in early childhood by foul sights and vile principles, and was not sound, nor ever could have been, whatever the origin and growth of my passions.  At last, after going through a course of philosophy and rhetoric, to the great delight of the audience, he demanded that I should be condemned to privation of civil rights and imprisonment for life.

Though my counsel was a man of spirit and intelligence, the letter had so taken him by surprise, the people in court were so unfavourably disposed towards me, and the judges, as they listened to him, so frequently showed signs of incredulity and impatience (an unseemly habit which appears to be the heritage of the magisterial benches of this country), that his defence was tame.  All that he seemed justified in demanding with any vigour was a further inquiry.  He complained that