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Ducat arose and commenced his plea. “Gentlemen, my client, to tell the truth, is the most noisome blackguard that I ever came across in my life, and I should not have been willing to appear in his defense had I not a mitigating circumstance to plead, to wit: they are all that way in the country he came from. Look at him closely; you will read his astonishment in his eyes; he does not understand the gravity of his offense. Here in France we may employ spies, but no one would touch one of them unless with a pair of pincers, while in that country espionage is considered a highly honorable career and an extremely meritorious manner of serving the state. I will even go so far as to say, gentlemen, that possibly they are not wrong; our noble sentiments do us honor, but they have also the disadvantage of bringing us defeat. If I may venture to speak in the language of Cicero and Virgil, quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat. You will understand the allusion, gentlemen.”

And he took his seat again, while Sambuc resumed:

“And you, Cabasse, have you nothing to say either for or against the defendant?”

“All I have to say,” shouted the Provencal, “is that we are wasting a deal of breath in settling that scoundrel’s hash. I’ve had my little troubles in my lifetime, and plenty of ’em, but I don’t like to see people trifle with the affairs of the law; it’s unlucky. Let him die, I say!”

Sambuc rose to his feet with an air of profound gravity.

“This you both declare to be your verdict, then–death?”

“Yes, yes! death!”

The chairs were pushed back, he advanced to the table where Goliah lay, saying:

“You have been tried and sentenced; you are to die.”

The flame of the two candles rose about their unsnuffed wicks and flickered in the draught, casting a fitful, ghastly light on Goliah’s distorted features. The fierce efforts he made to scream for mercy, to vociferate the words that were strangling him, were such that the handkerchief knotted across his mouth was drenched with spume, and it was a sight most horrible to see, that strong man reduced to silence, voiceless already as a corpse, about to die with that torrent of excuse and entreaty pent in his bosom.

Cabasse cocked the revolver. “Shall I let him have it?” he asked.

“No, no!” Sambuc shouted in reply; “he would be only too glad.” And turning to Goliah: “You are not a soldier; you are not worthy of the honor of quitting the world with a bullet in your head. No, you shall die the death of a spy and the dirty pig that you are.”

He looked over his shoulder and politely said:

“Silvine, if it’s not troubling you too much, I would like to have a tub.”

During the whole of the trial scene Silvine had not moved a muscle. She had stood in an attitude of waiting, with drawn, rigid features, as if mind and body had parted company, conscious of nothing but the one fixed idea that had possessed her for the last two days. And when she was asked for a tub she received the request as a matter of course and proceeded at once to comply with it, disappearing into the adjoining shed, whence she returned with the big tub in which she washed Charlot’s linen.

“Hold on a minute! place it under the table, close to the edge.”

She placed the vessel as directed, and as she rose to her feet her eyes again encountered Goliah’s. In the look of the poor wretch was a supreme prayer for mercy, the revolt of the man who cannot bear the thought of being stricken down in the pride of his strength. But in that moment there was nothing of the woman left in her; nothing but the fierce desire for that death for which she had been waiting as a deliverance. She retreated again to the buffet, where she remained standing in silent expectation.

Sambuc opened the drawer of the table and took from it a large kitchen knife, the one that the household employed to slice their bacon.