ly claimed the acquittal of the prisoners on the testimony of
the senator himself.

The president summed up the case with all the more impartiality because
it was evident that the minds of the jurors were already made up. He
even turned the scales in favor of the prisoners by dwelling on the
senator's evidence. This clemency, however, did not in the least
endanger the success of the prosecution. At eleven o'clock that night,
after the jury had replied through their foreman to the usual questions,
the Court condemned Michu to death, the Messieurs de Simeuse to
twenty-four years' and the Messieurs d'Hauteserre to ten years, penal
servitude at hard labor. Gothard was acquitted.

The whole audience was eager to observe the bearing of the five guilty
men in this supreme moment of their lives. The four gentlemen looked
at Laurence, who returned them, with dry eyes, the ardent look of the
martyrs.

"She would have wept had we been acquitted," said the younger de Simeuse
to his brother.

Never did convicted men meet an unjust fate with serener brows or
countenances more worthy of their manhood than these five victims of a
cruel plot.

"Our counsel has forgiven you," said the eldest de Simeuse to the Court.

* * * * *

Madame d'Hauteserre fell ill, and was three months in her bed at the
hotel de Chargeboeuf. Monsieur d'Hauteserre returned patiently to
Cinq-Cygne, inwardly gnawed by one of those sorrows of old age which
have none of youth's distractions; often he was so absent-minded that
the abbe, who watched him, knew the poor father was living over again
the scene of the fatal verdict. Marthe passed away from all blame; she
died three weeks after the condemnation of her husband, confiding her
son to Laurence, in whose arms she died.

The trial once over, political events of the utmost importance effaced
even the memory of it, and nothing further was discovered. Society is
like the ocean; it returns to its level and its specious calmness
after a disaster, effacing all traces of it in the tide of its eager
interests.

Without her natural firmness of mind and her knowledge of her cousins'
innocence, Laurence would have succumbed; but she gave fresh proof of
the grandeur of her character; she astonished Monsieur de Grandville and
Bordin by the apparent serenity which these terrible misfortunes called
forth in her noble soul. She nursed Madame d'Hauteserre and went daily
to the prison, sayi