After Dark Part 15

"Ex-royalist coach-maker to the tyrant Capet."

"Accusation?"

"Conspiracy in prison."

The president nodded, and entered in the book: "Martigne, coachmaker.

Accused of conspiring in prison. Antic.i.p.ated course of law by suicide.

Action accepted as sufficient confession of guilt. Goods confiscated.

1st Thermidor, year two of the Republic."

"Silence!" cried the man with the bludgeon, as the president dropped a little sand on the entry, and signing to the jailer that he might remove the dead body, closed the book.

"Any special cases this morning?" resumed the president, looking round at the group behind him.

"There is one," said Lomaque, making his way to the back of the official chair. "Will it be convenient to you, citizen, to take the case of Louis Trudaine and Rose Danville first? Two of my men are detained here as witnesses, and their time is valuable to the Republic."

The president marked a list of names before him, and handed it to the crier or usher, placing the figures one and two against Louis Trudaine and Rose Danville.

While Lomaque was backing again to his former place behind the chair, Danville approached and whispered to him, "There is a rumor that secret information has reached you about the citizen and citoyenne Dubois. Is it true? Do you know who they are?"

"Yes," answered Lomaque; "but I have superior orders to keep the information to myself just at present."

The eagerness with which Danville put his question, and the disappointment he showed on getting no satisfactory answer to it, were of a nature to satisfy the observant chief agent that his superintendent was really as ignorant as he appeared to be on the subject of the man and woman Dubois. That one mystery, at any rate was still, for Danville, a mystery unrevealed.

"Louis Trudaine! Rose Danville!" shouted the crier, with another rap of his bludgeon.

The two came forward, at the appeal, to the front railing of the platform. The first sight of her judges, the first shock on confronting the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed to overwhelm Rose. She turned from deadly pale to crimson, then to pale again, and hid her face on her brother's shoulder. How fast she heard his heart throbbing! How the tears filled her eyes as she felt that his fear was all for her!

"Now," said the president, writing down their names. "Denounced by whom?"

Magloire and Picard stepped forward to the table. The first answered--"By Citizen Superintendent Danville."

The reply made a great stir and sensation among both prisoners and audience.

"Accused of what?" pursued the president.

"The male prisoner, of conspiracy against the Republic; the female prisoner, of criminal knowledge of the same."

"Produce your proofs in answer to this order."

Picard and Magloire opened their minutes of evidence, and read to the president the same particulars which they had formerly read to Lomaque in the secret police office.

"Good," said the president, when they had done, "we need trouble ourselves with nothing more than the identifying of the citizen and citoyenne Dubois, which, of course, you are prepared for. Have you heard the evidence?" he continued, turning to the prisoners; while Picard and Magloire consulted together in whispers, looking perplexedly toward the chief agent, who stood silent behind them. "Have you heard the evidence, prisoners? Do you wish to say anything? If you do, remember that the time of this tribunal is precious, and that you will not be suffered to waste it."

"I demand permission to speak for myself and for my sister," answered Trudaine. "My object is to save the time of the tribunal by making a confession."

The faint whispering, audible among the women spectators a moment before, ceased instantaneously as he p.r.o.nounced the word confession. In the breathless silence, his low, quiet tones penetrated to the remotest corners of the hall; while, suppressing externally all evidences of the death-agony of hope within him, he continued his address in these words:

"I confess my secret visits to the house in the Rue de Clery. I confess that the persons whom I went to see are the persons pointed at in the evidence. And, lastly, I confess that my object in communicating with them as I did was to supply them with the means of leaving France. If I had acted from political motives to the political prejudice of the existing government, I admit that I should be guilty of that conspiracy against the Republic with which I am charged. But no political purpose animated, no political necessity urged me, in performing the action which has brought me to the bar of this tribunal. The persons whom I aided in leaving France were without political influence or political connections. I acted solely from private motives of humanity toward them and toward others--motives which a good republican may feel, and yet not turn traitor to the welfare of his country."

"Are you ready to inform the court, next, who the man and woman Dubois really are?" inquired the president, impatiently.

"I am ready," answered Trudaine. "But first I desire to say one word in reference to my sister, charged here at the bar with me." His voice grew less steady, and, for the first time, his color began to change, as Rose lifted her face from his shoulder and looked up at him eagerly.

"I implore the tribunal to consider my sister as innocent of all active partic.i.p.ation in what is charged against me as a crime--" He went on. "Having spoken with candor about myself, I have some claim to be believed when I speak of her; when I a.s.sert that she neither did help me nor could help me. If there be blame, it is mine only; if punishment, it is I alone who should suffer."

He stopped suddenly, and grew confused. It was easy to guard himself from the peril of looking at Rose, but he could not escape the hard trial to his self-possession of hearing her, if she spoke. Just as he p.r.o.nounced the last sentence, she raised her face again from his shoulder, and eagerly whispered to him:

"No, no, Louis! Not that sacrifice, after all the others--not that, though you should force me into speaking to them myself!"

She abruptly quitted her hold of him, and fronted the whole court in an instant. The railing in front of her shook with the quivering of her arms and hands as she held by it to support herself! Her hair lay tangled on her shoulders; her face had a.s.sumed a strange fixedness; her gentle blue eyes, so soft and tender at all other times, were lit up wildly. A low hum of murmured curiosity and admiration broke from the women of the audience. Some rose eagerly from the benches; others cried:

"Listen, listen! she is going to speak!"

She did speak. Silvery and pure the sweet voice, sweeter than ever in sadness, stole its way through the gross sounds--through the coa.r.s.e humming and the hissing whispers.

"My lord the president," began the poor girl firmly. Her next words were drowned in a volley of hisses from the women.

"Ah! aristocrat, aristocrat! None of your accursed t.i.tles here!" was their shrill cry at her. She fronted that cry, she fronted the fierce gestures which accompanied it, with the steady light still in her eyes, with the strange rigidity still fastened on her face. She would have spoken again through the uproar and execration, but her brother's voice overpowered her.

"Citizen president," he cried, "I have not concluded. I demand leave to complete my confession. I implore the tribunal to attach no importance to what my sister says. The trouble and terror of this day have shaken her intellects. She is not responsible for her words--I a.s.sert it solemnly, in the face of the whole court!"

The blood flew up into his white face as he made the a.s.severation. Even at that supreme moment the great heart of the man reproached him for yielding himself to a deception, though the motive of it was to save his sister's life.

"Let her speak! let her speak!" exclaimed the women, as Rose, without moving, without looking at her brother, without seeming even to have heard what he said, made a second attempt to address her judges, in spite of Trudaine's interposition.

"Silence!" shouted the man with the bludgeon. "Silence, you women! the citizen president is going to speak."

"The prisoner Trudaine has the ear of the court," said the president, "and may continue his confession. If the female prisoner wishes to speak, she may be heard afterward. I enjoin both the accused persons to make short work of it with their addresses to me, or they will make their case worse instead of better. I command silence among the audience, and if I am not obeyed, I will clear the hall. Now, prisoner Trudaine, I invite you to proceed. No more about your sister; let her speak for herself. Your business and ours is with the man and woman Dubois. Are you, or are you not, ready to tell the court who they are?"

"I repeat that I am ready," answered Trudaine. "The citizen Dubois is a servant. The woman Dubois is the mother of the man who denounces me--Superintendent Danville."

A low, murmuring, rushing sound of hundreds of exclaiming voices, all speaking, half-suppressedly, at the same moment, followed the delivery of the answer. No officer of the court attempted to control the outburst of astonishment. The infection of it spread to the persons on the platform, to the crier himself, to the judges of the tribunal, lounging, but the moment before, so carelessly silent in their chairs. When the noise was at length quelled, it was subdued in the most instantaneous manner by one man, who shouted from the throng behind the president's chair:

"Clear the way there! Superintendent Danville is taken ill!"

A vehement whispering and contending of many voices interrupting each other, followed; then a swaying among the a.s.sembly of official people; then a great stillness; then the sudden appearance of Danville, alone, at the table.

The look of him, as he turned his ghastly face toward the audience, silenced and steadied them in an instant, just as they were on the point of falling into fresh confusion. Every one stretched forward eagerly to hear what he would say. His lips moved; but the few words that fell from them were inaudible, except to the persons who happened to be close by him. Having spoken, he left the table supported by a police agent, who was seen to lead him toward the private door of the court, and, consequently, also toward the prisoners' platform. He stopped, however, halfway, quickly turned his face from the prisoners, and pointing toward the public door at the opposite side of the hall, caused himself to be led out into the air by that direction. When he had gone the president, addressing himself partly to Trudaine and partly to the audience, said:

"The Citizen Superintendent Danville has been overcome by the heat in the court. He has retired by my desire, under the care of a police agent, to recover in the open air; pledging himself to me to come back and throw a new light on the extraordinary and suspicious statement which the prisoner has just made. Until the return of Citizen Danville, I order the accused, Trudaine, to suspend any further acknowledgment of complicity which he may have to address to me. This matter must be cleared up before other matters are entered on. Meanwhile, in order that the time of the tribunal may not be wasted, I authorize the female prisoner to take this opportunity of making any statement concerning herself which she may wish to address to the judges."

"Silence him!" "Remove him out of court!" "Gag him!" "Guillotine him!"

These cries rose from the audience the moment the president had done speaking. They were all directed at Trudaine, who had made a last desperate effort to persuade his sister to keep silence, and had been detected in the attempt by the spectators.

"If the prisoner speaks another word to his sister, remove him," said the president, addressing the guard round the platform.

"Good! we shall hear her at last. Silence! silence!" exclaimed the women, settling themselves comfortably on their benches, and preparing to resume their work.