M. Valmorin rose slowly and bowed to the President, and then to the jury. It was an old story with him—the murder of a degenerate man by a fallen woman. He had only to go over an old formula.
"There you are!" whispered M. Perissard to his colleague. "It is practically over!"
"Gentlemen of the jury, I shall not keep you long," began M. Valmorin, in a gentle, pleasant voice. "The crime on which you have to give your verdict is simple and baneful. The woman has killed her lover—but who is this woman? What is her real name? Where does she come from? Who is she? We do not know! Since her arrest the prisoner has refused to answer all questions that have been put to her. She has not spoken a syllable in reply to the Examining Magistrate, and you have seen for yourselves that here in court she has insisted on remaining obstinately silent, although her silence cannot but harm her case—if she has the slightest shred of defense!
"There is sometimes an explanation of a murder—if not an excuse for it—to be found in the motives that inspired it. Murders are committed for reasons of money, for reasons of love, for reasons of jealousy, or to quench a thirst for vengeance. And the passion which arms the criminal's hand, which disturbs her power of reasoning and which makes her act without thinking—this, to some extent, diminishes her responsibility and the horror which the act of murder makes every man feel."
The jurors were leaning forward, their eyes fastened on his face and their reasons hypnotized by the musical, confident voice.
"When one or other of these reasons is brought forward, justice may be tempered with mercy. But how can you be asked to find excuses for an act, the motive of which the prisoner refuses to disclose? By this very refusal we may be forgiven for believing—nay, we are almost forced to believe that they are the worst possible motives. I distrust, for my part, the impenetrable mystery in which the prisoner has robed herself, and I can feel no pity for a guilty woman whose lips have not uttered a word of repentance!"
A loud, clear voice rang suddenly and sharply through the court.
"I will speak presently!"
A burst of laughter would not have been more disconcerting! M. Valmorin stopped, and every eye in the court was on the prisoner. Half of the men in the great room had started to their feet. The attitude and the look of suffering and the dark, hunted eyes were not visibly changed, but it was undoubtedly the woman who had spoken. The prosecutor bit his lip. Ten seconds before he had read in every eye in the jury-box, and in nearly every face in the courtroom, a placid acquiescence. Now there was pity in the glance of more than one of the twelve who would judge his case, and he would have to win them away from it. This would be harder than gaining their confidence at the outset had been.
The usher hammered the top of his desk until the excitement died away and there was order in court once more. Then M. Valmorin began the work of repairing the damage.