To what vile and secret little history was this the key! To me it only signified that, while I had fancied them discussing a point of my case, the two were passing confidences on a totally alien matter. At last I felt very small; and that would have pleased Carinne. “But, at any rate,” I thought, “the charge against me must now assume some definite form.” He, that dark _bouche de fer_ of the Terror, stared at me gloomily, as if he had expected to find me already removed. Then suddenly he flung down upon the table the paper he had in his hand, and cried automatically, as if in a certain absence of mind, “I demand this man of the law to which he is forfeit.” God in heaven! And so my trial was ended. They had not even allotted me one from the litter of mongrel counsel that, sitting there like begging curs, dared never, when retained, score a point in favour of a client lest the hags and the brats should hale them off to the lamp-irons. This certainly was Justice paralysed down one whole side. I heard a single little cry lift itself from the hall behind me and the clucking of the _tricoteuses_. I felt it was all hopeless, but I clutched at the last desperate chance as the President turned to address (in three words) the jury. “_M. l’Accusateur Public_,” I said, hurriedly, “I am constrained to tell you that I have in my possession that which may induce you to consider the advisability of a remand.” The fellow stared dumfoundered at me, as if I had thrown my cap in his face. The President hung on his charge. “Oh!” said the former, with an ironical nicety of tone--“and what is the nature of this magnificent evidence?” I had out my scrap of paper, folded like a _billet-doux_. “If the citizen will condescend to cast his eye on this?” I said. He considered a minute. Curiosity ever fights in the bully with arrogance. At length he made a sign to a _gendarme_ to bring him that on which, it seemed, my life depended. Every moment while he dwelt on the words was like the oozing of a drop of blood to me. I had in a flash judged it best to make him sole confidant with me in the contents of the paper, that so his private cupidity might be excited, and he not be driven by necessity to play the _rôle_ of the incorruptible. The instant he looked up my whole heart expanded. “The prisoner,” he said, “acquits his conscience of a matter affecting the State. I must call upon you, _M. le Président_, to grant for the present a remand.” Oh, _mon Dieu_! but the shamelessness of this avarice! I believe the scoundrel would have blushed to be discovered in nothing but an act of mercy. “The prisoner is remanded to close confinement in the Convent of St Pélagie,” were the words that dismissed me from the court; and I swear Fouquier-Tinville’s large eyes followed me quite lovingly as I was marched away. CHAPTER XIII. THE RED CART.