One morning, after a night when he had seen the Eumenides, he started awake, broken with terror and weak as a child. The dawn was piercing the window curtains with its wan arrows. Evariste's hair, lying tangled on his brow, covered his eyes with a black veil; Elodie, by the bedside, was gently parting the wild locks. She was looking at him now, with a sister's tenderness, while with her handkerchief she wiped away the icy sweat from the unhappy man's forehead. Then he remembered that fine scene in the _Orestes_ of Euripides, which he had essayed to represent in a picture that, if he could have finished it, would have been his masterpiece--the scene where the unhappy Electra wipes away the spume that sullies her brother's lips. And he seemed to hear Elodie also saying in a gentle voice: "Hear me, beloved brother, while the Furies leave you master of your reason ..." And he thought: "And yet I am no parricide. Far from it, it is filial piety has made me shed the tainted blood of the enemies of my fatherland." XXIV There seemed no end to these trials for conspiracy in the prisons. Forty-nine accused crowded the tiers of seats. Maurice Brotteaux occupied the right-hand corner of the topmost row,--the place of honour. He was dressed in his plum-coloured surtout, which he had brushed very carefully the day before and mended at the pocket where his little Lucretius had ended by fretting a hole. Beside him sat the woman Rochemaure, painted and powdered and patched, a brilliant and ghastly figure. They had put the Pere Longuemare between her and the girl Athenais, who had recovered her look of youthful freshness at the Madelonnettes. On the platform the gendarmes massed a number of other prisoners unknown to any of our friends, and who, as likely as not, knew nothing of each other,--yet accomplices one and all,--lawyers, journalists, _ci-devant_ nobles, citizens, and citizens' wives. The _citoyenne_ Rochemaure caught sight of Gamelin on the jurors' bench. He had not answered her urgent letters and repeated messages; still she had not abandoned hope and threw him a look of supplication, trying to appear fascinating and pathetic for him. But the young juror's cold glance robbed her of any illusion she might have entertained. The Clerk read the act of accusation, which, succinct as was its reference to each individual, was a lengthy document because of the great number accused. It began by exposing in general outline the plot concocted in the prisons to drown the Republic in the blood of the Representatives of the nation and the people of Paris; then, coming to each severally, it went on: