“Simply, monsieur,” I said, “that it is not within reason to accuse me of returning to what I have never quitted.”
“Paris?”
“The soil of France.”
“That shall not avail thee!” he thundered. “What right hast thou to the soil that thou and thine have manured with the sacred blood of the people?”
“Oh, monsieur!” I began—“but if you will convert my very refutation——”
He over-roared me as I spoke. He was breathing himself, at my expense, for the more serious business of the day. Positively I was being used as a mere punching-bag on which this “bruiser” (comme on dit à l’Anglaise) might exercise his muscles.
“Silence!” he shouted; “I know of what I speak! thou walk’st on a bog, where to extricate the right foot is to engulf the left. Emigrant art thou—titular at least by force of thy accursed rank; and, if that is not enough, thou hast plotted in prison with others that are known.”
I smiled, awaiting details of the absurd accusation. I had formed, it was evident, no proper conception of this court of summary jurisdiction. The President leaned over his desk at the moment and spoke with Tinville, proffering the latter his snuff-box. They exchanged some words, a pantomime of gesticulation to me. As they nodded apart, however, I caught a single wafted sentence: “We will whip her like the Méricourt if she is obstinate.”
To what vile and secret little history was this the key! To me it only signified that, while I had fancied them discussing a point of my case, the two were passing confidences on a totally alien matter. At last I felt very small; and that would have pleased Carinne.
“But, at any rate,” I thought, “the charge against me must now assume some definite form.”