M. Folgat rose promptly.

He showed neither the anger nor the disappointment of an advocate who has just had a cause which he knew to be just.

“That day has not come yet,” he replied.  “Remember your promise.  As long as there remains a ray of hope, we shall fight.  Now we have much more than mere hope at this moment.  In less than a month, in a week, perhaps to-morrow, we shall have our revenge.”

The unfortunate man shook his head.

“I shall nevertheless have undergone the disgrace of a condemnation,” he murmured.

The taking the ribbon of the Legion of Honor from his buttonhole, he handed it to M. Folgat, saying—­

“Keep this in memory of me, and if I never regain the right to wear it”—­

In the meantime, however, the gendarmes, whose duty it was to guard the prisoner, had risen; and the sergeant said to Jacques,—­

“We must go, sir.  Come, come!  You need not despair.  You need not lose courage.  All is not over yet.  There is still the appeal for you, and then the petition for pardon, not to speak of what may happen, and cannot be foreseen.”

M. Folgat was allowed to accompany the prisoner, and was getting ready to do so; but the latter said, with a pained voice,—­

“No, my friend, please leave me alone.  Others have more need of your presence than I have.  Dionysia, my poor father, my mother.  Go to them.  Tell them that the horror of my condemnation lies in the thought of them.  May they forgive me for the affliction which I cause them, and for the disgrace of having me for their son, for her betrothed!”

Then, pressing the hands of his counsel, he added,—­

“And you, my friends, how shall I ever express to you my gratitude?  Ah! if incomparable talents, and matchless zeal and ability, had sufficed, I know I should be free.  But instead of that”—­he pointed at the little door through which he was to pass, and said in a heartrending tone,—­

“Instead of that, there is the door to the galleys.  Henceforth”—­

A sob cut short his words.  His strength was exhausted; for if there are, so to say, no limits to the power of endurance of the spirit, the energy of the body has its bounds.  Refusing the arm which the sergeant offered him, he rushed out of the room.

M. Magloire was well-nigh beside himself with grief.

“Ah! why could we not save him?” he said to his young colleague.  “Let them come and speak to me again of the power of conviction.  But we must not stay here:  let us go!”

They threw themselves into the crowd, which was slowly dispersing, all palpitating yet with the excitement of the day.

A strange reaction was already beginning to set in,—­a reaction perfectly illogic, and yet intelligible, and by no means rare under similar circumstances.

Jacques de Boiscoran, an object of general execration as long as he was only suspected, regained the sympathy of all the moment he was condemned.  It was as if the fatal sentence had wiped out the horror of the crime.  He was pitied; his fate was deplored; and as they thought of his family, his mother, and his betrothed, they almost cursed the severity of the judges.