Le Corsaire, then, was prosecuted for provoking to rebellion. The jury retired to deliberate for form's sake, but soon came out and pronounced the manager of the Corsaire not guilty. The trial of La Tribune succeeded that of the Corsaire. M. Bascans was acquitted as M. Viennot had been. Then came the affair of the right of association. Nineteen members of the Society of Friends of the People were summoned before the juries of the second court. They were accused of having been leaders and administrators of a political meeting of over twenty persons. This was quite a different matter from the two preceding acquittals! After three quarters of an hour's deliberation, M. Fenet, foreman of the jury, read this declaration—
"Re the first question.—'Has there been an association gathering on fixed days to discuss politics?'—'Yes,'
"Re the second question.—'Did those gatherings take place without authorisation from the Government?'-'Yes.'
[After these two affirmations everybody believed of course that the accused were certain to be found guilty.]
"Re the third question.—Are the accused guilty?'-'No.'"
The whole court broke into applause. Thus the right of association was established by jury. People were beginning to grow sick of political sentences. Statistics had just been published giving the list of those sentenced during the Restoration: the Bourbons of the Elder Branch had in fifteen years cut off a hundred and eighteen heads and sentenced fourteen contumacious persons; it had condemned seventeen to penal servitude with hard labour, nineteen to a term of penal servitude; seventy-two to transportation, eighteen to imprisonment, thirty-five to temporary banishment. In conclusion, the general total of sentences, whether heavy or light, from death penalty to supervision, mounted to two thousand four hundred and sixty-six I In the midst of all these events, on 12 December Hérold produced a masterpiece: Le Pré-aux-Clercs.
Art is a king which walks smilingly through revolutions, looking down with contempt on all the upheavals it survives.
[CHAPTER III]
Victor Jacquemont
As this blood-stained year 1832 drew to a close, in which cholera alone had deducted from the population of France a tithe of ninety-five thousand deaths, the authorities of Bombay were mourning the death of Victor Jacquemont, a young savant of the highest distinction. Being a scholar, Victor Jacquemont detested men of imagination; he particularly hated us dramatists. He had left France in 1828 before the great literary movement which ensued, and he only judged of it by the leading articles in the newspapers.