hich we have just perused, adding: "The gentleman desires to
be present at the trial," the President, with a quick and deferential
movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper
and returned it to the usher, saying, "Admit him."

The unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near the door
of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in which the usher
had left him. In the midst of his revery he heard some one saying to
him, "Will Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?" It was the same usher
who had turned his back upon him but a moment previously, and who was
now bowing to the earth before him. At the same time, the usher handed
him the paper. He unfolded it, and as he chanced to be near the light,
he could read it.

"The President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects to M.
Madeleine."

He crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained for him
a strange and bitter aftertaste.

He followed the usher.

A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted
cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a
table with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just
quitted him still rang in his ears: "Monsieur, you are now in the
council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door,
and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President's
chair." These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of
narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.

The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought
to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment
when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful
realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. He
was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned. With
stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment,
where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring with his
name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing. He stared at
the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering that it should be that
chamber and that it should be he.

He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn out by the
jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it. It seemed to him that
he felt nothing.

He approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall, and which
contained, under gl