During the delivery of this little speech, Uncle Jacob had been sobbing and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. ‘Bless thee, my child!’ he cried, ‘for having had the courage to speak the truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word.’
‘The girl amazes me,’ said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. ‘I never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly. Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?’
‘It was, indeed, by my free consent,’ said Edward, trembling.
‘For shame, brother!’ cried old Jacob. ‘Sir, it was by Edward’s free consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the courtyard! Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Grégoire, him who reads The Sorrows of Werther.’
Grégoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider as he said, ‘I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one leave the house.’
‘Citizen St. Just,’ cried Schneider, ‘you will not allow the testimony of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favour the interest of the émigrés.’
‘And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the others to escape: you must make a better defence, Citizen Schneider,’ said St. Just, sternly.
Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an order to quit Strasburg for Paris, immediately after a conversation with Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts regarding her father’s wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.
‘You are in the uniform of a regiment in this town; who sent you from it?’ said St. Just.
I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which Schneider had sent me.