"My heart is beating—quicker than it should! My voice is trembling—and it is all that I can do to keep from breaking down and crying like a child instead of pleading for my client—here before you. I crave your indulgence for this weakness—but it does not make me blush!" He threw back his head, and at last he saw the jurors clearly before him.
"It is the first time in my life that I have come close to the bitterness of a woman's grief and misery and—my heart is tom by the fear that I shall not be able to prove myself equal to the noble task that I have undertaken!"
He paused and wet his dry lips with his tongue.
"I can find none of the arguments that I had prepared for the purpose of moving and convincing you, and my ready-made phrases have vanished from my brain, dispersed by one glance at the suffering and distress of this poor woman!
"Look at her, gentlemen! No words of mine can have the power of tears to move you to mercy!"
There was a falter and piteous break in his voice as he half turned and laid his hand on the dock. There was not another sound save the woman's sobs. The faces of the jurors told him that they were listening with eager attention and the fear of being made ridiculous began to pass. Blindly, Instinctively, he had stumbled on to the greatest rule of the greatest orator that ever lived: "Be earnest!"
In those few minutes the jurymen had felt the force of clean emotion, of noble purpose, behind the stumbling words, and they waited breathlessly. With the growing confidence some of the arguments that he had embodied in his written speech came back to him; but he could not remember the words.
"And there is a mystery—a veil of mystery which has not been torn by the evidence and still surrounds this woman for whom I am pleading," he went on. "Who is this weeping and despairing woman? Where does she come from, and why did she kill the man with whom she lived? We do not know!" His voice was gaining a strong, commanding ring.
"She alone can rend this veil that surrounds her life, and she refuses to do so! She alone knows the secret and keeps it! Why? So as to mislead the cause of justice? Certainly not! For if that were her object, she would speak. She would try to justify herself. She would lie, so as to appear innocent!
"She could find a dozen plausible reasons for the murder of her lover! A quarrel, a violence on his part, a momentary madness—nobody could give her the lie. Nobody saw or heard what happened immediately before the murder; and Laroque, the only person in the room besides the prisoner, is dead! But my client has disdained all subterfuge! She knew perfectly well what the consequence of her act would be—and—she—has not—tried—to—escape it!