Dionysia could not allow him to go off in this way.
“Listen to me, Jacques,” she said: “let me tell you why I ran the risk of taking this serious step, that may cost me so dear. I come to you in the name of all your friends, in the name of M. Folgat, the great advocate whom your mother has brought down from Paris and in the name of M. Magloire, in whom you put so much confidence. They all agree you have adopted an abominable system. By refusing obstinately to speak, you rush voluntarily into the gravest danger. Listen well to what I tell you. If you wait till the examination is over, you are lost. If you are once handed over to the court, it is too late for you to speak. You will only, innocent as you are, make one more on the list of judicial murders.”
Jacques de Boiscoran had listened to Dionysia in silence, his head bowed to the ground, as if to conceal its pallor from her. As soon as she stopped, all out of breath, he murmured,—
“Alas! Every thing you tell me I have told myself more than once.”
“And you did not speak?”
“I did not.”
“Ah, Jacques, you are not aware of the danger you run! You do not know”—
“I know,” he said, interrupting her in a harsh, hoarse voice,—“I know that the scaffold, or the galleys, are at the end.”
Dionysia was petrified with horror.
Poor girl! She had imagined that she would only have to show herself to triumph over Jacques’s obstinacy, and that, as soon as she had heard what he had to say, she would feel reassured. And instead of that—