“If,” said the advocate, “the coolness and indifference to blood which the headsman exhibits, be a proof of guilt in the victim before him, I could congratulate the prosecution on their witness. But,” cried he, in an accent of wild excitement, “great Heavens! are we again fallen on such times as to need atrocity like this? Is the terrible ordeal of blood through which we have passed to be renewed once more? Is the accusation to be hoarded, the calumnious evidence secreted, the charge held back, till the scaffold is ready,--and then the indictment, the slander, the sentence, and the death, to follow on one another like the flash and the thunder? Is the very imputation of having heard from a Bourbon to bear its prestige of sudden death?” “Silence, sir!” cried the President, to whom the allusion to the Duc d'Enghien was peculiarly offensive, and who saw in the looks of the spectators with what force it told. “You know the prisoner?” said he, turning towards D'Ervan. “I have that honor, sir,” said he, with a bland smile. “State to the court the place and the occasion of your first meeting him.” “If I remember correctly, it was in the Palais Royal, at Beauvilliers's. There was a meeting of some of the _Chouan_ party arranged for that evening, but from some accident only three or four were present. The sous-lieutenant, however, was one.” “Repeat, as far as your memory serves you, the conduct and conversation of the prisoner during the evening in question.” In reply, the Abbé, recapitulated every minute particular of the supper; scarcely an observation the most trivial he did not recall, and apply, by some infernal ingenuity, to the scheme of the conspiracy. Although never, even in the slightest instance, falsifying any speech, he tortured the few words I did say into such a semblance of criminality that I started, as I heard the interpretation which now appeared so naturally to attach to them. (During all this time my advocate never interrupted him once, but occupied himself in writing as rapidly as he could follow the evidence.) The chance expression which concluded the evening,--the hope of meeting soon,--was artfully construed into an arranged and recognized agreement that I had accepted companionship amongst them, and formally joined their ranks. From this he passed on to the second charge,--respecting the conversation I had overheard at the Tuileries, and which I so unhappily repeated to Beauvais. This the Abbé, dwelt upon with great minuteness, as evidencing my being an accomplice; showing how I had exhibited great zeal in the new cause I had embarked in, and affecting to mark how very highly the service was rated by those in whose power lay the rewards of such an achievement.