My God! what agony for him in these three months, during which there had not been five minutes in which he had not struggled against these contradictory sentiments.
On the field of drill, for he had returned to service; on horseback, galloping over the roads of Lorraine; in his room thinking, over this question: “What was he to do?”
Weeks had passed without any answer, but the moment had come when it was necessary to act and to decide, for in two days—the trial must occupy four sessions—Greslon would be judged and condemned. There would be still some time after the conviction; but what of it! The same debate would only have to be gone over again. He had not decided to be silent until the last. He refrained from speaking, but he had not vowed to himself that he would refrain from speaking. This was the reason it had been physically impossible for him to accompany his father to the Palais de Justice during this first session, of which he should soon hear the account, as twelve was striking, twelve very harsh strokes followed by a carillon in the steeple of a neighboring church.
“My captain, here is M. the Marquis,” said the orderly, who had heard the rolling of a carriage, then its stop before the hotel, after which he took a look out of the window.
“Ah, well, my father?” asked André anxiously as soon as the marquis had entered.
“Ah, well! the jury is for us,” responded M. de Jussat. He was no longer the broken down monomaniac whom Greslon had so bitterly mocked in his memoir. His eyes were brilliant and there was youth in his voice and gestures. The passion for vengeance, instead of breaking him down, sustained him. He had forgotten his hypochondria, and his speech was quick, impetuous, and clear. “They were drawn this morning. Among the twelve jurors, there are three farmers, two retired officers, a physician, two shopkeepers, two proprietors, a manufacturer, and a professor, all good men, men of family, and who would wish to make an example. The procureur-général is sure of a conviction. Ah! the scoundrel! but I was happy, the only time in three months, when I saw him between two gendarmes! But what audacity! He looked around the hall. I was on the first bench. He saw me. Would you believe it, he did not turn away his eyes? He looked at me fixedly as if he wished to brave me. Ah! we must have his head, and we will have it.”
The old man had spoken with a savage accent and he had not noticed the painful expression that his words had brought to the face of the count. This last, at the picture of his enemy, thus conquered by public force, seized by the gendarmes, as if caught in the gear of that anonymous and invincible machine of justice, trembled with a chill of shame, the shame of a man who has employed bravos in a work of death.
These gendarmes, and these magistrates, were really the bravos employed in doing what he would so much have liked to do himself, with his own hands and upon his own responsibility. Decidedly, it was cowardly not to have spoken.
Then the look thrown by Greslon at the Marquis de Jussat, what did it mean? Did he know that Charlotte had written her letter of confession the evening before her suicide? And if he knew it, what did he think? The idea alone that this young man could suspect the truth and despise them for their silence lighted a fever in the blood of the count.
“No,” said he to himself when the marquis had gone back for the afternoon session after a dinner eaten in haste, “I cannot keep silent. I will speak, or I will write.”