Before the speaker could follow up his words, the President hammered at my wall. “I beseech thee do not answer the fellow,” he said. “It is a rogue that was suborned in the most pitiful case of the St Amaranthe.” “Monsieur, monsieur!” exclaimed the accused; “it is a slander and a lie. And how wouldst thou pick thy words with thy shoulder bubbling and hissing under the branding-iron?” “As I would pick nettles,” I said. “I beseech thee!” cried again my neighbour the President, in a warning voice, “this man can boast no claim to thy attention.” The poor rascal cried out: “It is inhuman! I perish for a word of sympathy!” I would have given it him; but his protests were laughed into silence. He yelled in furious retort. His rage was over-crowed, and drifted into sullenness. “I dreamt I belaboured a drum,” said the President, “and it burst under my hands.” * * * * * * * Truly I did not regret the distraction this whimsical Society afforded me. Left to myself, the fever of my mind would have corroded my very reason, I think. To have been condemned to face those hours of tension indescribable, with no company but that of my own thoughts, would have proved such an ordeal as, I felt, would have gone far to render me nerveless at the critical moment. So, responding to the dig of circumstance in my ribs, I abandoned myself to frolic, and almost, in the end, lapsed into the other extreme of hysteria. But, about five o’clock, closing in from the far end of the corridor, a swift ominous silence succeeded the jangle; and I was immediately aware of heavy footsteps treading the cemented floor of the passage, and, following upon these, the harsh snap of locks and the rumbling of a deep voice-- “Follow me, De la Chatière.” The words were the signal for a shrilling chorus of sounds--whoops, cat-calls, verberant renderings of a whole farmyard of demoniac animals. “_Miau, miau_, Émile! Thou art caught in thine own springe!” “They will ask thee one of thy nine lives, Émile!” “Ah--bah! if he pleads as he reasons, upside-down, they will only cut off his feet.” “Plead thy poor sick virtue, Émile!” “No, no! that were one _coup de tête_ that shall procure him another.” “What need to lie when the truth will serve! Plead thy lost virtue, Émile, and the jury will love thee.” “_Taisez-vous, donc!_” roared a jailer. He was answered by a shriek of laughter. In the midst of the noise I heard the door of my neighbouring cell flung open and Marino summoned forth. As the party retreated: “M. le Président, M. le Président!” shouted a voice--“Art thou going without a word? But do not, I beseech thee, in the pride of thy promotion neglect to nominate thy successor!” “Lamarelle, then,” answered the poor fellow, in a voice that he tried vainly to control.