Thursday, November 11. The trial enters upon its final stage. A few witnesses come and give evidence, all of them favourable to me.... One of them, Inspector Pouce, bravely exclaims: "If Mme. Steinheil had told me she was guilty, I would not have believed her."...
Then there enters a man with military bearing, whom I can hardly recognise, but whose voice, when he takes the oath, sends a thrill through my broken frame. I recognise him now.... It is Sheffer, the friend of my youth, my fiancé for a few months, my first love... over twenty years ago!... Tears come into my eyes, and I hide my head between my hands....
Beaucourt!... My beloved father.... The avenue of chestnut trees... our meetings... our charming, innocent idyll....
M. Sheffer, softly, sadly, tells the story of our beautiful, our sweet romance.... I was eighteen then, and the happiest girl on earth, with a devoted mother and the best of all fathers.... And the young lieutenant loved me, and I loved him.... Life was beautiful, and the future smiled on me....
And there stands my fiancé.... I have not seen him for over twenty years. He stands there at the bar. I can feel his eyes resting on me in a kindly way, from time to time, as he recalls the past.... "She was a charming young girl, refined, modest, artistically inclined.... She worshipped her father and her mother.... Marguerite is incapable of having committed the monstrous crime imputed to her...." My God! My God! And I am that Marguerite Japy, and I sit in a prisoner's dock, and I am being tried for murder.... Is there no justice in this world! How much longer shall I be wrongly accused? How much longer am I to suffer? Has my martyrdom not lasted enough, then....
M. Sheffer ceases speaking.... I hear him turn round to leave the Court. I raise my head, and our eyes meet.... There is tender pity in his eyes; there are tears in mine.... Oh! when will it all end?
The worst is coming. The Advocate-General rises, and throws back his red sleeves. The most tragic hour has come.... What horrible accusations will he make? What punishment will he ask for the crime I have never committed!...
CHAPTER XXX
THE SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION—THE
SPEECH FOR THE DEFENCE
DUSK has fallen. An attendant clicks the switches on, one after the other, with a sharp, dry sound of rattling bones, and the Court is flooded with light. That little noise and the sudden light jar my nerves and hurt me.... I am no longer a normal human being. I do not know, at times, who I am or where I am, or what is going on around me.... Still, I know this tall man opposite, and I can read in his bloodshot eyes that he means to do me all the harm he can. I hold tight to the wooden partition before me; if I let go, I feel I shall fall.... And I must not, I will not, fall, at this supreme hour. I think of Marthe....
In a deep, harsh voice, M. Trouard-Riolle begins: