"You submit, then?" said the judge to the procurator, as they retired.
"What one must, one must!" replied the procurator.
Tausdorf went up to him, and said with friendly dignity, "I pray you, sir, conduct my defence truly; I do not understand this matter, and will reward your labour. If the business were the ordering of a battle, I should know better what I was about."
"Say on, then," replied the procurator, gaping: "how am I to defend you?"
"In God's name!" cried Tausdorf angrily, "how should I, who have been devoted to arms from my youth, teach you what you are to say for me before the tribunal? The little Latin which I learnt at Gitschin is of no use here. But you are a studied man, well informed in the law, and must best know what will conduce to my advantage."
"It will all be of no use," muttered the procurator; "but relate the tale to me circumstantially, that I may thoroughly comprehend it."
Again poor Tausdorf undertook the sad labour of narrating the tale of blood. The procurator listened to him, gaping, and then briefly repeated what he had heard to the tribunal, concluding with, "You have now heard Tausdorf's statement of the affair, gentlemen, and I submit it to your decision."
"Is that your whole defence?" cried the knight indignantly, while this statement was being protocolled. "May our Saviour one day speak for your sins before the judgment-seat of God, as you have spoken for me in this hour before the tribunal of man!"
"Have you any thing else to advance?" said the judge to the accused and his defender; and as they were silent, he rang the bell, saying, "The audit is closed.--Let the knight be conveyed back again to the Hildebrand," he added to the serjeant, who then entered.
"Gentlemen," said Tausdorf, with manly firmness, "I do not believe that you have a right to pronounce judgment on me; but if you do hold yourselves so empowered, I warn you honestly, when you give your votes, to keep your conscience and your dying hour before your eyes. It is an easy thing for you to slay me, for I am in your power; but innocent blood cries with a thousand voices to Heaven, and God is just."