Javogues broke in furiously:
"Do not listen to him! He prepares some new lie!" Then grasping Dossonville by the collar, he shook his fist in his face. "I swear that if he is acquitted, I myself will cut his throat."
"The Citoyen Javogues," Dossonville continued, without changing the level of his voice, "unfortunately for me, from the day we met has hated me with an obstinate hatred. I adopted the subterfuge only because I believed that otherwise I never could have reached the prison alive. The proof is, I denounced it immediately and explained my reasons. You will find it there. I will now tell you with whom I passed the day."
He waited a moment for quiet, Javogues thundering:
"He lies! He lies! He lies!"
"The man whose testimony I invoke is known to you, Citoyen Maillard. Of his patriotism there can be no question. Unfortunately, he left immediately after for the Army of the Rhone. From ten o'clock of the night of August 9th until ten o'clock of the morning of August 10th I was in the house of the Citoyen Héron."
There was a movement of stupefaction in the assemblage, even Javogues recoiling. But the first words of Maillard fell upon the ears of Dossonville as the sudden fall of a sword.
"The Citoyen Héron did not leave for the frontier. Let the Citoyen Héron be roused and corroborate the accused!"
Two or three threw themselves upon the sleeper to bring him forward. The mind of Dossonville, thus faced with certain defeat, did not give a second to despair, but, with the last instinctive grasping for life, gathered for a supreme effort.