Mordaunt was of the same opinion; but, as he watched the young officer throughout the whole of the day's proceedings, he came to the conclusion that the verdict was everything in this man's estimation and the sentence less than nothing. If he were condemned to be blown from his own gun, he would face the ordeal unshrinking, almost with indifference. Deprived of honour, what else was there in life?
So when the end came at last, and the inevitable verdict was pronounced, Mordaunt shut his note-book with a feeling that there was no more to be recorded.
As a matter of fact the sentence was not pronounced at the time, and only transpired two days later, when it was officially made public—expulsion from the army and incarceration in a French fortress for ten years.
"That, of course, will be commuted," said one who knew the probabilities of the case to Mordaunt when the sentence was made known. "They will release him au secret in a few years and banish him from the country on peril of arrest. They are bound to make an example of him, but they won't keep it up. The verdict was not unanimous. And, above all, they won't make a martyr of him now. The other affaire is too recent."
Mordaunt agreed as to the likelihood of this, but he did not find it particularly consolatory. He had seen the prisoner's face as he was guarded through the surging, hostile crowd; and he knew that for Bertrand de Montville the heavens had fallen.
An innocent man had been found guilty, and that was the end. He was beyond the reach of any lenient influence now that justice had failed him. They had pushed him over the edge of the precipice—this man who had dared to climb so high; and in the hissings and groanings of the crowd he heard the death-knell of his honour.
In silence he went down into the abyss. In silence he passed out of Trevor Mordaunt's life. Only as he went, for one strange second, as though drawn by some magnetic force, his eyes, dark and still, met those of the Englishman, with his level, unfaltering scrutiny. No word or outward sign passed between them. They were utter strangers; it was unlikely that they would ever meet again. Only for that one second something that was in the nature of a message went from one man's soul to the other's. For that instant they were in communion, subtle but curiously distinct.
And Bertrand de Montville went to his martyrdom with the knowledge that one man—an Englishman—believed in him, while Trevor Mordaunt was aware that he knew it, and was glad.
For he had studied human nature long enough to realize that even a stranger's faith may make a supreme difference in the hour of a man's most pressing need.