“Why don’t you say at once, my mother, that Jacques is an incendiary and an assassin?”
Raising her head with an air of dauntless energy, with trembling lips, and fierce glances full of wrath and disdain, she added,—
“And do I really remain the only one to defend him,—him, who, in his days of prosperity, had so many friends? Well, so be it!”
Naturally, M. Folgat had been less deeply moved than either the marchioness or M. de Chandore; and hence he was also the first to recover his calmness.
“We shall be two, madam, at all events,” he said; “for I should never forgive myself, if I allowed myself to be influenced by that letter. It would be inexcusable, since I know by experience what your heart has told you instinctively. Imprisonment has horrors which affect the strongest and stoutest of minds. The days in prison are interminable, and the nights have nameless terrors. The innocent man in his lonely cell feels as if he were becoming guilty, as the man of soundest intellect would begin to doubt himself in a madhouse”—
Dionysia did not let him conclude. She cried,—
“That is exactly what I felt, sir; but I could not express it as clearly as you do.”
Ashamed at their lack of courage, M. de Chandore and the marchioness made an effort to recover from the doubts which, for a moment, had well-nigh overcome them.
“But what is to be done?” asked the old lady.
“Your son tells us, madam, we have only to wait for the end of the preliminary examination.”