“Well, then, I shall come and see you as soon as I am free, and from the free man, I suppose, you will accept a small souvenir?” asked Palm, kindly.
The jailer made no reply to this question, but exclaimed, impatiently: “Make haste, it is high time!”
Palm laughed, and, nodding a farewell to the jailer, left the prison in the midst of the soldiers.
“Poor man, he suspects nothing,” murmured the jailer to himself, and his features now became mild and gentle, and his eyes were filled with tears. “Poor man, he believes they will set him at liberty! Yes, they will do so, but it is not the sort of liberty he is looking and hoping for!”
Palm followed the soldiers gayly and courageously to the room where the members of the court-martial were assembled seated on high-backed arm-chairs which had been placed in a semicircle on one side of the room, awaiting the arrival of the prisoner.
He greeted them with an unclouded brow and frank and open bearing; not a tinge of fear and nervousness was to be seen in his features; he fixed his large and lustrous eyes on the lips of General St. Hilaire who presided over the court-martial and now rose from his seat. The secretary of the court immediately approached the general and handed him a paper.
The general took it, and, bending a stern glance on Palm, said: “The court-martial has agreed to-day unanimously on your sentence. I will now communicate it to you.”
The other officers rose from their seats to listen standing to the reading of the sentence. It is true, their faces were grave, and for the first time Palm was seized with a sinister foreboding, and asked himself whether his judges would assume so grave and solemn an air if they were merely to announce to him that he was innocent and consequently free.
A small pause ensued. The general then raised his voice, and read in a loud and ringing tone: “Whereas at all places where there is an army it is the first and most imperious duty of its chief to watch over its safety and preservation;”
“Whereas the circulation of writings instigating sedition and murder does not only threaten the safety of the army, but also that of the nation generally;”