It needed not another word to tell the priest who and what were meant; but other words were spoken.
"His defence was a mere mass of sentimentality," the speaker went on. "He owns to having walked the streets the whole night of the murder, but he says that it was from distress of mind. He had to decide before the next day whether he would abandon all hope of the fortune for which he was contending, and lose with it all that he had expended, or else throw into the chasm the few hundreds he had retained that an accident might not find him penniless. He declared that the state of his mind was such that he could not sleep, nor keep still, nor stay in the house. Now, that part of the story would not have been so bad if he had not been seen near the priest's house, hanging about there, and going away when he was observed, and if he had not declared that, when he went away from Crichton in the morning, he had not heard of the murder. The tracks were not a strong point, for Newcome makes everybody's boots just alike, and there are a good many men in Crichton who have as neat a foot as Schöninger. But the rest of the defence was nonsense. The shawl was what convicted him. It was his shawl; he owned it; and the fragment found in Mme. Chevreuse's hand just fitted the torn corner, thread for thread. I could see that he was confounded when that came up. He says he left the shawl in Mrs. Ferrier's garden in the evening, and went for it early in the morning before anybody was up, and that he found it just where he had left it. He owned, too, that he put it slyly into Mrs. Macon's carriage. He said he knew her and what she was collecting for; had heard all about it at Madison. When he left his broken harness—which, by the way, was not broken, it appears, but only unclasped somewhere—and went to Mr. Grey's, he took his shawl over his arm absent-mindedly, and found it a nuisance while he was going through the woods. Seeing Mrs. Macon's carriage there full of parcels, some gray blankets among them, it occurred to him to add his shawl to the pile without putting any one to the trouble of thanking him. He said that he believed those nuns to be very good women, and that he felt a respect for them for the sake of F. Chevreuse, who had been very polite to him. Fancy a Jew taking off his shawl to give it to a nun, and that to please a priest! The story is too ridiculous, you see. Oh! it is clear. There never was a clearer case of circumstantial evidence. No one could have a doubt. But the verdict is too hard."
"You think it should not have been murder in the first degree?" another voice asked.
"It should not," was the emphatic reply. "It is almost an outrage to make it so. But people became ferocious the moment it was clear that he was guilty, and I believe they would gladly have taken him out and hanged him to the first tree. The fact undoubtedly is that he was pressed for money, and meant to help himself to the priest's. Mme. Chevreuse heard him, and started to alarm the house, and I think he gave her an unlucky push. But nothing of that sort would content the prosecution nor the people. They must have it that at the very best he killed her wilfully when he found that she had recognized him. The female servant testified that there was a candle overturned in the priest's room, which must have gone out in falling. Madame's first thought would naturally be to light a candle. Still, that is not sure. That same servant wished to show that the prisoner had a spite against the priest's mother, and the Carthusen girl had the same story; but if people had been calm, their gossip would have made no impression. Schöninger's lawyer tried to prove that madame's death resulted from the fall; but there was a bad bruise...."
F. Chevreuse gasped for breath. "For God's sake, stop!" he cried out, half turning toward the speaker, then sinking instantly into his seat again.
A perfect silence followed. The priest was struggling with his feelings, and regretting not having withdrawn before his self-control gave way, and the gentlemen behind him were recovering the shock of learning who their neighbor was, and feeling their way to a solution of the difficulty. One of them had an inspiration. "Let's go and have a cigar," he said; and F. Chevreuse was left to himself.
But his solitude was full of terrible images, and in that few minutes all his relations with the Jew had been changed. He would not have said to himself that he believed the man guilty, and he would have said that, guilty or innocent, he wished him no harm; but what his imagination had utterly refused to do in connecting Mr. Schöninger with his mother's tragical fate the plain talk of this stranger had accomplished. He could no longer separate the two; and the sight of the Jew, or the sound of his name even, would, in future, call up associations intolerable to him.
"You know all, then?" was F. O'Donovan's greeting when they met.
The face of F. Chevreuse showed, indeed, that he had no questions, or few, to ask.
"The law has decided," he said, "and, for the present at least, I cannot question its decision. They know better than I how to arrive at the truth. At the same time, I never will say of a man that he is guilty till he has himself told me that he is, or till I have the evidence of my own senses. And now, what have you to tell me about my people? Is it well with them?"