At that moment the President, who had been waiting for my counsel, ordered me to stand up. The guard carried arms. As if by a shock of electricity, all those assembled in the court became animated with life. A mean-looking man, seated at a table beneath the judge’s chair, evidently the clerk of the court, broke the silence by reading the verdict of the jury, which they had given in my absence. A cold sweat bedewed all my limbs, and I leaned against the wall to save myself from falling. “Counsel, have you anything to urge against the sentence of death being pronounced?” asked the President. I could have said a great deal, but I was unable to frame a consecutive sentence; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. My counsel rose to his feet. As I followed his line of argument I understood that he was endeavouring to soften the verdict of the jury, and striving to induce the judge to inflict the lighter penalty, the penalty which I had been so wounded at his suggesting. My indignation must have been very strong to pierce through the numerous complications of my faculties. I endeavoured to repeat in a loud voice the words I had already said, “Sooner death a thousand times!” but all that I could do was to clutch him convulsively by the arm, and cry out in convulsive accents, “No, no!” The Public Prosecutor argued against my counsel’s plea, and I listened to him with an air of stupid satisfaction. Then the judges left the court to consult together, and on their return the President read the sentence. “Condemned to death,” murmured the spectators; and as they hurried me away the crowd pressed around me with a noise like that of a falling house. I walked along passively, stupefied and confused. A sudden transformation had taken place in me. Until the sentence of death had been actually passed, I felt that I was living and breathing like other men; now I felt that a barrier had been erected between myself and my fellow-creatures. Nothing now wore the same aspect as it had done previously. Those tall, luminous windows, the bright sunlight, the clear sky, the beautiful flowers, all became white and pallid like the colour of a shroud. Those men and women and children who pressed around me had something of the air of spectres. A carriage painted a dirty black, with bars to the windows, was waiting for me. As I was about to enter it, I paused, and looked around me. “A condemned criminal!” cried the passers-by, as they hurried towards the vehicle. Through the mist that seemed to interpose between the world and myself I could perceive the young girls who followed my every movement with greedy eyes. “Good!” cried the younger one, clapping her hands. “It will be in six weeks’ time!” CHAPTER III. CONDEMNED to death. Well, why not? have I not read in some book that _all men are condemned to death with a respite the date of which is not fixed_? How, then, is my position changed?