"Chambardeau was released the following day, but it was not till a month later that I was tried. My counsel came to see me twice before the trial, and I did not like his ways. Mimi could not manage to secure Lehautier, who had become a great man, and wanted 300 francs (£12) to take my case up, so she got that little chap for 50 francs (£2). If you had seen the side he put on! 'Don't tell me that you are guilty,' he began, 'because, if you tell me so, my conscience'--_en va donc!_ (get along) his conscience!--well, his conscience would not allow him to defend me. I told him, therefore, the story we had concocted, but he said that would never do, and advised me to say that it was true that I had stabbed Chambardeau, but that he had begun the row, and that I only acted in self-defence. And a jolly mess he made of it: he never told Chambardeau nor Mimi anything about what they had to swear; so they swore all wrong, and then the judge presiding over the court put me all sorts of questions about my previous convictions; and he then called me a demoralised scoundrel and what not, and in the end I got two months! And," added Titi, violently shaking me by the blouse, "you call that justice! It was a fair fight, all fair and square, and I got two months for it. _Ah malheur!_ That's what they call a Republic. If we had both been fine gentlemen, and fought a duel with swords, and, instead of bleeding Chambardeau a bit, I had stuck my sword right through his guts, every one would have said what a fine fellow I was. Instead of that, because I am only Martin, _alias_ Titi de la Villette, I get two months, and they call me a scoundrel. _Ah malheur! malheur! malheur!_ Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.[33] That's all right for those who've got money, but the poor people, _on s'en fiche!_ (Who cares about them?)" I am bound to admit that Titi was right on some points; but, unfortunately, he did not realise to what depths of degradation he had fallen.