demonstration of the barristers, unmoved by the shaking and sobbing of the black-dressed woman in the dock, M. de Valles pointed to the grim table containing the _pièces de conviction_, and cried: “Look at that horrible table, and confess; and shed real, not crocodile, tears. You have stated that on the night of the crime you were bound down and gagged by three men in black robes and by a red-headed woman, who entered your room with a dark lantern and then—after they had bound and gagged you, and after you yourself had lost consciousness—assassinated poor M. Steinheil and the unfortunate Madame Japy. Nobody believes you; your story is a tissue of falsehoods. It was you who, with the help of accomplices, murdered your husband and your mother.” But let us not be too hard upon M. de Valles for his savage treatment of Madame Steinheil. He had considerately protected her from the cruel curiosity and impertinence of _le Tout Paris_; and then it was his legitimate rôle to attempt by continuous ruthless bullying to extract a confession from his pale-faced, exhausted martyr. For in France the word “judge,” as we understand it, is a misnomer. The French judge is the real public prosecutor, the chief cross-examiner; save for the jury, he would be all-powerful. But as the twelve men “good and true” are chosen from the justice-loving French people at large, M. le Juge’s drastic, brutal insinuations and accusations cannot alone bring about a condemnation. It is for the jury to decide. It remains with the jury to condemn. And at one o’clock in the morning of the 14th November the jurors in the Steinheil _cause célèbre_—workmen, mechanics, _petits commerçants_—demonstrated their inherent love and sense of justice by—— But I am anticipating events. Let us return to the crowded, stifling Court of Assizes; and then take a stroll in the marble corridors of the Paris Law Courts, where, throughout the Steinheil trial, wooden barriers barred the way to all those not provided with the precious yellow ticket; and where groups of policemen, and of Municipal and Republican Guards were discussing—like every other soul in Paris—this incomprehensible, amazing _cause célèbre_.