ced and emaciated by long confinement and
his features showing coarser in the glare of light that flooded the
hall, still retained traces of his old grace and proud bearing. His eyes
met Gamelin's and filled with scorn.

Gamelin, possessed by a calm fury, rose, asked leave to speak, and,
fixing his eyes on the bust of Roman Brutus, which looked down on the
Tribunal:

"_Citoyen_ President," he said, "although there may exist between one of
the accused and myself ties which, if they were made public, would be
ties of married kinship, I hereby declare I do not decline to act. The
two Bruti did not decline their duty, when for the salvation of the
state and the cause of freedom, the one had to condemn a son, the other
to strike down an adoptive father."

He resumed his seat.

"A fine scoundrel that," muttered Chassagne between his teeth.

The public remained cold, whether because it was tired of high-flown
characters, or thinking that Gamelin had triumphed too easily over his
feelings of family affection.

"_Citoyen_ Gamelin," said the President, "by the terms of the law, every
refusal must be formulated in writing within the twenty-four hours
preceding the opening of the trial. In any case, you have no reason to
refuse; a patriot jury is superior to human passions."

Each prisoner was questioned for three or four minutes, the examination
resulting in a verdict of death in every instance. The jurors voted
without a word said, by a nod of the head or by exclamation. When
Gamelin's turn came to pronounce his opinion:

"All the accused," he declared, "are convicted, and the law is
explicit."

As he was descending the stairway of the Palais de Justice, a young man
dressed in a bottle-green box-coat, and who looked seventeen or eighteen
years of age, stopped him abruptly as he went by. The lad wore a round
hat, tilted on the back of his head, the brim framing his fine pale face
in a dark aureole. Facing the juror, in a terrible voice vibrating with
passion and despair:

"Villain, monster, murderer!" he screamed. "Strike me, coward! I am a
woman! Have me arrested, have me guillotined, Cain! I am your
sister,"--and Julie spat in his face.

The throng of _tricoteuses_ and _sansculottes_ was relaxing by this time
in its Revolutionary vigilance; its civic zeal had largely cooled;
Gamelin and his assailant found themselves the centre of nothing worse
than uproar and confusion. Julie fought a way through the press and
di