'Then do you lie!' cried Lucia, whose look seemed to wither the old man. 'This man lies!' continued she, pointing with her finger to her husband. 'I have betrayed him; he knows it; and to revenge himself, he accuses Arthur of a crime. I have myself proposed to him to accuse me of the deed. I should not have denied it; but he would not. The blood of a woman would not suffice him; he must have that of Arthur; of Arthur whom I love, I do not say more than my life—that would be but little—but more than my honor!'
Lucia here interrupted herself, and cast her sparkling eyes toward that part of the hall occupied by the female part of the audience, among whom a lively agitation was manifested, and whose whisperings clearly condemned an avowal so contrary to all received usages.
'You speak of immodesty,' said she to them, with a bitter smile. 'Spite of your want of pity, I would not wish any one of you to become so wretched as to learn that there is yet one thing more powerful than shame; and that is, despair. Think you, if the scaffold were not in view, I should thus hold up my disgrace for your contempt? They are about to kill him, I tell you; and must I let him die, that your blushes for me may be spared?'
As she pronounced these last words, Lucia reeled and closed her eyes, while a death-like paleness took the place of the burning hue with which fever had colored her cheeks. The supernatural energy which had thus far sustained her, suddenly gave way, as the flame of a torch is extinguished by a blast of wind. Doctor Mallet, who stood at the foot of the stand, watching with vigilant anxiety the slightest movement of the young woman, threw himself forward and received her in his arms the moment she fell. Others ran to his assistance, and Lucia was speedily carried into the witnesses' hall. She remained there for some time, apparently lifeless; but soon there followed this swoon a succession of convulsions more dreadful than any she had ever before experienced.
'The court is adjourned for half an hour,' said the president, despairing of obtaining immediate silence or attention.
These words completely let loose the storm; and the audience-chamber suddenly assumed the appearance of a tempestuous sea. A hundred conversations, equally lively, took place at once. The conduct of Madame Gorsay became the inexhaustible text for comments the most violent and contradictory. Some thought her crazy, others frightful, while a third class pronounced her sublime. In general, the old men were of the first opinion, the women of the second, and the young men of the third.
'How happy must this d'Aubian be!' exclaimed one of these latter, in an extatic tone.
'Happy! to be on the culprit's seat!' replied with a sneer a man of more mature years.
'And what matters that? Is there a humiliation which may not be effaced, or a grief which cannot be consoled, by the happiness of inspiring such a passion? Spite of its ignominy, even the culprit's seat becomes a throne for him who reigns over such a noble heart. Oh! to be loved thus—and die!'
The kindling eyes of the young enthusiast addressed this sentimental exclamation to a pretty blonde, whose coquetry had kept him for six months on the culprit's seat, while waiting for the throne of love.