ATTORNEY-GENERAL [_to the President_] Let us go. _They leave the office._ SCENE IX:--_Vagret, Madame Vagret._ MADAME VAGRET. What is it? VAGRET. Nothing. MADAME VAGRET. Nothing? You are so depressed--and yet you've just had such a success as will tell on your career. VAGRET. It is that success which alarms me. MADAME VAGRET. Alarms you? VAGRET. Yes, I'm afraid-- MADAME VAGRET. Afraid of what? VAGRET. Of having gone too far. MADAME VAGRET. Too far! Doesn't the murderer deserve death ten times over? VAGRET [_after a pause_] Are you quite certain, yourself, that he is a murderer? MADAME VAGRET. Yes. VAGRET [_in a low voice_] Well--for myself-- MADAME VAGRET. You? VAGRET. I--I don't know. I know nothing. MADAME VAGRET. My God! VAGRET. A dreadful thing happened to me in the course of my indictment. While I, the State Attorney, the official prosecutor, was exercising my function, another self was examining the case calmly, in cold blood; an inner voice kept reproaching me for my violence and insinuating into my mind a doubt, which has gone on increasing. A painful struggle has been going on in my mind, a cruel struggle--and if, as I was finishing, I labored under that emotion of which the President was speaking, if when I demanded the death penalty my voice was scarcely audible, it was because I was at the end of my struggle; because my conscience was on the point of winning the battle, and I made haste to finish, because I was afraid it would speak out against my will. When I saw the advocate remain seated and that he was not going to resume his speech in order to tell the jury the things I would have had him tell them--then I was really afraid of myself, afraid of my actions, of my words, of their terrible consequences, and I wanted to gain time. MADAME VAGRET. But, my dear, you have done your duty; if the advocate has not done his, that does not concern you. VAGRET. Always the same reply. If I were an honest man I should tell the jury, when the hearing is resumed, of the doubts that have seized me. I should explain how those doubts arose in me; I should call their attention to a point which I deliberately concealed from them, because I believed the counsel for the defence would point it out to him. MADAME VAGRET. You know, my dear, how thoroughly I respect your scruples, but allow me to tell you all the same that it won't be you who will declare Etchepare guilty or not guilty; it will be the jury. If anyone ought to feel disturbed, it is Maitre Placat, not you-- VAGRET. But I ought to represent justice!