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“I reckon, Simon,” said Maurice more in sadness than in anger, “that you will be cruelly punished shortly, when you see what’s about to happen.”

“So what’s about to happen, then?” asked Simon.

“Citizen president,” said Maurice, without bothering further with his odious accuser, “I join my friend Lorin in asking you to let the young girl who has just been arrested be heard before they make that poor woman say what they’ve no doubt coached her to say in evidence.”

“You hear that, citizeness?” shrieked Simon. “You hear that? They’re saying over there that you’re a false witness!”

“Me, a false witness?” said Mother Tison. “Ha! You’ll see. Just you wait. Just you wait.”

“Citizen,” said Maurice, “please order this unfortunate woman to hold her tongue.”

“Ha! You’re frightened!” cried Simon. “You’re frightened! Citizen president, I request the testimony of citizeness Tison.”

“Yes, yes, the testimony!” shouted the galleries.

“Silence!” cried the president. “The deputies of the Commune are back.”

At that moment, a carriage could be heard rolling up outside with a great clang of arms and the noise of shouting.

Simon wheeled around anxiously to the door.

“Leave the gallery,” the president said to him. “You no longer have the floor.”

Simon got down.

At that moment, gendarmes entered with a stream of curious onlookers, who were swiftly shoved back as a woman was propelled toward the front of the courtroom.

“Is that her?” Lorin asked Maurice.

“Yes, yes, that’s her,” said Maurice. “Oh! The poor girl, she’s finished!”

“The flower girl! The flower girl!” the gallery murmured, whipped up by curiosity. “It’s the flower girl!”

“I demand Mother Tison be heard before anything else,” screamed the cobbler. “You ordered her to give her evidence, president, and you can see she’s not giving it.”

Mother Tison was called and she began a terrible and detailed denunciation. According to her, the flower girl was certainly guilty; but Maurice and Lorin were her accomplices.

The denunciation had a visible effect on the public.

But Simon was gloating, triumphant.

“Gendarmes, bring on the flower girl!” cried the president.

“Oh! This is dreadful!” murmured Morand, hiding his head in his hands.

The flower girl was called and stood at the foot of the gallery, facing Mother Tison, whose testimony had just made the crime the girl was accused of a capital offense.

It was only then that she lifted her veil.

“Héloïse!” cried Mother Tison. “My daughter … You, here?”

“Yes, Mother,” the young woman softly replied.

“But why are you standing there between two gendarmes?”

“Because I stand accused, Mother.”

“You … accused?” cried Mother Tison in anguish. “But who by?”

“By you, Mother.”

A fearful silence, the silence of death, suddenly descended on the noisy rabble, and the painfulness of this horrible scene clutched at everyone’s heart.

“Her daughter!” voices whispered softly and as though far away. “Her daughter, that poor, poor woman!”

Maurice and Lorin looked at accuser and accused with a feeling of profound commiseration and respectful misery.

Simon, while wishing to see how the scene played out, still hoping Maurice and Lorin would remain compromised, tried to duck Mother Tison’s gaze as she swiveled her eyes around dementedly.

“What is your name, citizeness?” said the president, himself moved, to the calm and resigned young woman.

“Héloïse Tison, citizen.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen years old.”

“Where do you live?”

“Number 24, rue des Nonnandières.”

“Is it you who sold to citizen municipal officer Lindey, who is there in the dock, a bouquet of carnations this morning?”

The Tison girl turned toward Maurice and looked him full in the face.

“Yes, citizen. It was I,” she said.

Mother Tison herself looked at her daughter with eyes huge with horror.

“Do you know that each of the carnations contained a note addressed to the Widow Capet?”

“I know,” replied the accused.

A ripple of horror and admiration spread throughout the room. “Why did you offer the carnations