And certainly it required a character of marvellous strength to remain impassive and resolute under such circumstances.
Everybody around him was in despair, and gave up all hope.
The house of M. de Chandore, once so full of life and merriment, had become as silent and sombre as a tomb.
The last two months had made of M. de Chandore an old man in good earnest. His tall figure had begun to stoop, and he looked bent and broken. He walked with difficulty, and his hands began to tremble.
The Marquis de Boiscoran had been hit even harder. He, who only a few weeks before looked robust and hearty, now appeared almost decrepit. He did not eat, so to say, and did not sleep. He became frightfully thin. It gave him pain to utter a word.
As to the marchioness, the very sources of life seemed to have been sapped within her. She had had to hear M. Magloire say that Jacques’s safety would have been put beyond all doubt if they had succeeded in obtaining a change of venue, or an adjournment of the trial. And it was her fault that such a change had not been applied for. That thought was death to her. She had hardly strength enough left to drag herself every day as far as the jail to see her son.
The two Misses Lavarande had to bear all the practical difficulties arising from this sore trial: they went and came, looking as pale as ghosts, whispering in a low voice, and walking on tiptoe, as if there had been a death in the house.
Dionysia alone showed greater energy as the troubles increased. She did not indulge in much hope.
“I know Jacques will be condemned,” she said to M. Folgat. But she said, also, that despair belonged to criminals only, and that the fatal mistake for which Jacques was likely to suffer ought to inspire his friends with nothing but indignation and thirst for vengeance.
And, while her grandfather and the Marquis de Boiscoran went out as little as possible, she took pains to show herself in town, astonishing the ladies “in good society” by the way in which she received their false expressions of sympathy. But it was evident that she was only held up by a kind of feverish excitement, which gave to her cheeks their bright color, to her eyes their brilliancy, and to her voice its clear, silvery ring. Ah! for her sake mainly, M. Folgat longed to end this uncertainty which is so much more painful than the greatest misfortune.