ETCHEPARE. I swear. YANETTA. You swear never to tell them anything that may lessen their affection for me? ETCHEPARE. I swear. YANETTA. Promise me too--I beg you, Pierre--in the name of our happiness and my misery--promise to keep me fresh in their memory--let them pray for me, won't you? ETCHEPARE. I swear it. YANETTA. Then go--my life is done with. ETCHEPARE. Good-bye. _He goes out with the recorder. At the door the latter meets Mouzon._ THE RECORDER [_to Etchepare_] They are coming to show you the way out. THE RECORDER [_to Mouzon_] The woman Etchepare is there. MOUZON. Ah, she's there. Monsieur Vagret has been speaking of her. Well, I withdraw my complaint; I ask nothing better than that she shall be set at liberty. Now that I am a Councillor I don't want to be coming back from Pau every week for the examination. Proceed with the necessary formalities. SCENE V:--_Mouzon, Yanetta, the recorder._ MOUZON. Well--in consideration of the time you have been in custody, I am willing that you should be set at liberty--provisional liberty. I may, perhaps, even withdraw my complaint if you express regret for having insulted me. YANETTA [_calmly_] I do not regret having insulted you. MOUZON. Do you want to go back to prison? YANETTA. My poor man, if you only knew how little it matters to me whether I go to prison or not! MOUZON. Why? YANETTA. Because I have nothing left, neither house, nor home, nor husband, nor children. [_She looks at him_] And--I think--I think-- MOUZON. You think? YANETTA. I think it is you who are the cause of all the trouble. MOUZON. You are both acquitted, aren't you? What more do you ask? YANETTA. We have been acquitted, it is true. But all the same, I am no longer an honest woman--neither to my husband, nor to my children, nor to the world. MOUZON. If anyone reproaches you with the penalty inflicted upon you formerly, if anyone makes any illusion to the time you have spent in custody under remand, you have the right to prosecute the offender in the courts. He will be punished. YANETTA. Well! It is because someone reproached me with that old conviction that my husband has taken my children from me. That someone is a magistrate. Can I have him punished? MOUZON. No. YANETTA. Why not? Because he is a magistrate? MOUZON. No. Because he is the law. YANETTA. The law! [_Violently_] Then the law is wicked, wicked! MOUZON. Come, no shouting, no insults, please. [_To the recorder_] Have you finished? Then go to the office and have an order made out for her discharge. YANETTA. I'm no scholar; I've not studied the law in books, like you, and perhaps for that very reason I know better than you what is just and what is not. And I want to ask you a plain question: How is the law going to give me back my children and make up to me for the harm it's done me? MOUZON. The law owes you nothing. YANETTA. The law owes me nothing! Then what are you going to do--you, the judge?