was seizing fast upon him; nevertheless, it was a question
of the most menacing future for him; the likeness increased every
moment, and the entire crowd surveyed, with more anxiety than he did
himself, that sentence freighted with calamity, which descended
ever closer over his head; there was even a glimpse of a possibility
afforded; besides the galleys, a possible death penalty, in case his
identity were established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end
thereafter in condemnation. Who was this man? what was the nature of his
apathy? was it imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did
he not understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd,
and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible and
puzzling in this case: the drama was not only melancholy; it was also
obscure.

The counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that
provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar,
and which was formerly employed by all advocates, at Paris as well as at
Romorantin or at Montbrison, and which to-day, having become classic, is
no longer spoken except by the official orators of magistracy, to whom
it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness and its majestic
stride; a tongue in which a husband is called a consort, and a woman
a spouse; Paris, the centre of art and civilization; the king,
the monarch; Monseigneur the Bishop, a sainted pontiff; the
district-attorney, the eloquent interpreter of public prosecution; the
arguments, the accents which we have just listened to; the age of Louis
XIV., the grand age; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene; the reigning
family, the august blood of our kings; a concert, a musical solemnity;
the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious warrior, who,
etc.; the pupils in the seminary, these tender levities; errors imputed
to newspapers, the imposture which distills its venom through the
columns of those organs; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an
explanation as to the theft of the apples,--an awkward matter couched
in fine style; but Benigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a
chicken in the midst of a funeral oration, and he extricated himself
from the situation in stately fashion. The lawyer established the fact
that the theft of the apples had not been circumstantially proved.
His client, whom he, in his character of counsel, persisted in calling
Champmathieu, had not been seen scali