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The gendarme was Gilbert, who recognized the prisoner as the woman he caught in the Queen’s cell, and was showing, with his usual probity, the sympathy he couldn’t help but feel for courage and devotion.

The president had consulted his assessors; at Fouquier-Tinville’s invitation, he began his questions:

“Accused Lorin, what was the nature of your relationship with citizeness Dixmer?” he asked.

“What was the nature, citizen president?”

“Yes.”

“A friendship like ours, there was none purer,

She loved me as a brother, I loved her as a sister.”

“Citizen Lorin,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “that’s not a good rhyme.”

“How do you mean?” asked Lorin.

“Obviously there’s one too many er‘s.”

“Cut, citizen prosecutor! Cut! That’s your job.”

The impassive face of Fouquier-Tinville paled slighty at the terrible joke.

“And how did citizen Dixmer look upon the liaison of a man who claimed to be a republican with his wife?” asked the president.

“Oh! That I cannot tell you. I’ve told you I never knew citizen Dixmer and was more than happy not to.”

“But,” Fouquier-Tinville went on, “you don’t say that your friend citizen Maurice Lindey was the knot that bound you with the accused in such a pure friendship?”

“If I don’t say so,” answered Lorin, “it’s because it seems tactless to me to say so, and I might add I think you should have followed my example.”

“The citizens of the jury,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “will appreciate this singular alliance of two republicans with an aristocrat, and at the very moment when this aristocrat is convicted of the vilest plot ever hatched against the nation.”

“How could I have known about the plot you’re talking about, citizen prosecutor?” asked Lorin, more revolted than scared by the brutality of the argument.

“You knew this woman, you were her friend, she called you her brother, you called her your sister, and yet you didn’t know what she was up to? Is it thus possible, as you yourself have asked,” asked the president, “that she perpetrated on her own the action imputed to her?”

“She did not perpetrate the action on her own,” said Lorin making use of the technical jargon employed by the president. “As she told you, as I told you, and as I now repeat, her husband pushed her into it.”

“So how is it you don’t know the husband,” said Fouquier-Tinville, “since the husband was complicit in it with his wife?”

Lorin had only to mention Dixmer’s initial disappearance; Lorin had only to mention the love between Geneviève and Maurice; Lorin had only to mention, finally, how the husband had kidnapped his wife and hid her in some secret hideout, in order to exonerate himself from all connivance by clearing up any ambiguity.

But to do that, he would have to betray his two friends’ secret; to do that, he would have to make Geneviève blush for shame in front of five hundred people. Lorin shook his head as though to say no to himself.

“Well?” asked the president. “What do you say to the citizen prosecutor?”

“That his logic is overwhelming,” said Lorin. “And that he has convinced me of something I wasn’t even aware of.”

“What?”

“It is that I am, it would seem, one of the most dreadful conspirators ever seen.”

This declaration provoked universal hilarity. The jurors themselves couldn’t hold out, for Lorin had sent up the prosecutor’s tone with perfect accuracy. Fouquier felt the brunt of the general scorn. But since, in his tireless perseverance, he’d managed to ferret out all the secrets of the accused and knew them as well as they knew themselves, he could not help but feel compassionate admiration for Lorin.

“Come now, citizen Lorin,” he said. “Speak, defend yourself. The Tribunal will hear you out. For it knows your past, and your past is that of a fearless republican.”

Simon tried to speak; the president signaled to him to be quiet.

“Speak, citizen Lorin; we’re listening,” he said.

Lorin shook his head once more.

“This silence is tantamount to admission,” the president continued.

“No, it’s not,” said Lorin. “This silence is just silence, that’s all.”

“Once again,