His lawyer had pleaded insanity.

Indeed, how could one imagine that this workman should kill his best customers, rich and generous (as he knew), who in two years had enabled him to earn three thousand francs (his books showed it)?  Only one explanation could be offered:  insanity, the fixed idea of the unclassed individual who reeks vengeance on two bourgeois, on all the bourgeoisie, and the lawyer made a clever allusion to this nickname of “The Bourgeois,” given throughout the neighborhood to this poor wretch.  He exclaimed: 

“Is this irony not enough to unbalance the mind of this poor wretch, who has neither father nor mother?  He is an ardent republican.  What am I saying?  He even belongs to the same political party, the members of which, formerly shot or exiled by the government, it now welcomes with open arms this party to which arson is a principle and murder an ordinary occurrence.

“These gloomy doctrines, now applauded in public meetings, have ruined this man.  He has heard republicans—­even women, yes, women—­ask for the blood of M. Gambetta, the blood of M. Grevy; his weakened mind gave way; he wanted blood, the blood of a bourgeois!

“It is not he whom you should condemn, gentlemen; it is the Commune!”

Everywhere could be heard murmurs of assent.  Everyone felt that the lawyer had won his case.  The prosecuting attorney did not oppose him.

Then the presiding judge asked the accused the customary question: 

“Prisoner, is there anything that you wish to add to your defense?”

The man stood up.

He was a short, flaxen blond, with calm, clear, gray eyes.  A strong, frank, sonorous voice came from this frail-looking boy and, at the first words, quickly changed the opinion which had been formed of him.

He spoke loud in a declamatory manner, but so distinctly that every word could be understood in the farthest corners of the big hall: 

“Your honor, as I do not wish to go to an insane asylum, and as I even prefer death to that, I will tell everything.

“I killed this man and this woman because they were my parents.

“Now, listen, and judge me.

“A woman, having given birth to a boy, sent him out, somewhere, to a nurse.  Did she even know where her accomplice carried this innocent little being, condemned to eternal misery, to the shame of an illegitimate birth; to more than that—­to death, since he was abandoned and the nurse, no longer receiving the monthly pension, might, as they often do, let him die of hunger and neglect!

“The woman who nursed me was honest, better, more noble, more of a mother than my own mother.  She brought me up.  She did wrong in doing her duty.  It is more humane to let them die, these little wretches who are cast away in suburban villages just as garbage is thrown away.