“I saw a shadow which moved towards the wood, and at my approach disappeared suddenly.”
A prolonged stir went through the court; the accused man turned pale, and his eyes assumed a fixed look. The chief-justice did not take his eyes off him.
A few more unimportant questions, and then Paul was allowed to sit down.
His mother and sisters were called, but what they could tell was of no importance. The sisters looked round inquisitively, almost boldly. His mother wept when she had to speak about the moment of her waking.
Paul felt proud and happy that Elsbeth had not been compromised by him. He looked down smiling, and rejoiced at his courage. But when the witnesses were called for their oaths, and he had to lift up his hand, he felt as if a load of a hundred pounds were hanging on it, and as if a low, sad voice whispered in his ear, “Do not swear.”
And he swore.
When he sat down, the voice said again, “Have you, perhaps, committed perjury?” Instinctively he raised his head. Then he fancied that a gray shadow flitted past him and touched his forehead lightly.
He knitted his brows defiantly. “And supposing I should have sworn falsely, was it not for her?”
For a moment his soul was filled with wild joy at this thought, but in the next already a dull weight lay on his breast, stifling his breath and binding him hand and foot, so that he felt as if henceforth he would never be able to move any more.
He heard the monotonous voice of the counsel, who began his speech. But he did not heed it. Once he started, when the counsel for the defence pointed towards him with his bunch of keys, and cried out in his shrill, querulous voice: “And this witness, gentlemen of the jury, who roams about mysteriously at night in strange gardens, and finds out all sorts of psychological and artificial subterfuges to hide the tender motive of his nightly excursions, can you put any reliance upon him when he says he suddenly saw a shadow appear and disappear? Shadows which, to put it mildly, can only originate in his overheated brain? What did he want in the garden, gentlemen of the jury? I leave it to your penetration, to your experience of life, to answer this question; and as for the witness, it is his lookout to accommodate his oath to his conscience.”