“I shall not reply as I had at first proposed. Count Claudieuse is about to pay with his life for the effort which he has made to place his evidence before you. He could not even be carried home. He is perhaps at this very moment drawing his last breath upon earth in the adjoining room.” The counsel for the defence do not desire to address the jury; and, as the accused also declares that he has nothing more to say, the president sums up, and the jurymen withdrew to their room to deliberate. The heat is overwhelming, the restraint almost unbearable; and all faces bear the marks of oppressive fatigue; but nobody thinks of leaving the house. A thousand contradictory reports circulate through the excited crowd. Some say that Count Claudieuse has died; others, on the contrary, report him better, and add that he has sent for the priest from Brechy. At last, a few minutes after nine o’clock, the jury reappears. Jacques de Boiscoran is declared guilty, and, on the score of extenuating circumstances, sentenced to twenty years’ penal labor. THIRD PART--COCOLEU I. Thus M. Galpin triumphed, and M. Gransiere had reason to be proud of his eloquence. Jacques de Boiscoran had been found guilty. But he looked calm, and even haughty, as the president, M. Domini, pronounced the terrible sentence, a thousand times braver at that moment than the man who, facing the squad of soldiers from whom he is to receive death, refuses to have his eyes bandaged, and himself gives the word of command with a firm voice. That very morning, a few moments before the beginning of the trial, he had said to Dionysia,-- “I know what is in store for me; but I am innocent. They shall not see me turn pale, nor hear me ask for mercy.” And, gathering up all the energy of which the human heart is capable, he had made a supreme effort at the decisive moment, and kept his word. Turning quietly to his counsel at the moment when the last words of the president were lost among the din of the crowd, he said,-- “Did I not tell you that the day would come when you yourself would be the first to put a weapon into my hands?” M. Folgat rose promptly. He showed neither the anger nor the disappointment of an advocate who has just had a cause which he knew to be just. “That day has not come yet,” he replied. “Remember your promise. As long as there remains a ray of hope, we shall fight. Now we have much more than mere hope at this moment. In less than a month, in a week, perhaps to-morrow, we shall have our revenge.” The unfortunate man shook his head. “I shall nevertheless have undergone the disgrace of a condemnation,” he murmured. The taking the ribbon of the Legion of Honor from his buttonhole, he handed it to M. Folgat, saying-- “Keep this in memory of me, and if I never regain the right to wear it”-- In the meantime, however, the gendarmes, whose duty it was to guard the prisoner, had risen; and the sergeant said to Jacques,--