the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed
to overwhelm Rose. She turned from deadly
pale to crimson, then to pale again, and hid
her face on her brother's shoulder. How
fast she heard his heart throbbing! How
the tears filled her eyes, as she felt that his
fear was all for her!

"Now! " said the president, writing down
their names. "Denounced by whom?"

Magloire and Picard stepped forward to
the table. The first answered—"By citizen-
superintendent Danville."

The reply made a great stir and sensation
among both prisoners and audience.

"Accused of what?" pursued the president.

"The male prisoner, of conspiracy against
the Republic; the female prisoner, of criminal
knowledge of the same."

"Produce your proofs in answer to this
order."

Picard and Magloire opened their minutes
of evidence, and read to the president the
same particulars which they had formerly
read to Lomaque, in the Secret Police office.

"Good," said the president, when they
had done. " We need trouble ourselves with
nothing more than the identifying of the
citizen and citoyenne Dubois, which, of
course, you are prepared for. Have you
heard the evidence! " he continued, turning
to the prisoners; while Picard and
Magloire consulted together in whispers,
looking perplexedly towards the chief-agent,
who stood silent behind them. " Have you
heard the evidence, prisoners? Do you wish
to say anything? If you do, remember that
the time of this tribunal is precious, and that
you will not be suffered to waste it."

"I demand permission to speak, for myself
and for my sister," answered Trudaine. " My
object is to save the time of the tribunal by
making a confession."

The faint whispering, audible among the
women spectators, a moment before, ceased
instantaneously as he pronounced the word
confession. In the breathless silence, his low,
quiet tones penetrated to the remotest
corners of the hall; while, suppressing
externally all evidences of the death-agony of hope
within him, he continued his address in these
words:—

"I confess my secret visits to the house in
the Rue de Cléry. I confess that the
persons whom I went to see are the persons
pointed at in the evidence. And, lastly,
I confess that my object in communicating
with them as I did was to supply them with
the means of leaving France. If I had acted
from political motives, to the political
prejudice of the existing government, I admit
that I should be guilty of that conspiracy
against the Republic with which I am
charged. But no political purpose animated,
no political necessity urged me, in performing
the action which has brought me to the
bar of this tribunal. The persons whom I
aided in leaving France were without political
influence, or political connections. I acted
solely from private motives of humanity
towards them and towards others—motives
which a good republican may feel, and yet
not turn traitor to the welfare of his
country."

"Are you ready to inform the court, next,
who the man and woman Dubois really are?"
inquired the president, impatiently.

"I am ready," answered Trudaine. " But
first I desire to say one word in reference to
my sister, charged here at the bar with me."
His voice grew less steady; and, for the first
time, his colour began to change, as Rose
lifted her face from his shoulder, and looked
up at him eagerly, " I implore the tribunal to
consider my sister as innocent of all active
participation in what is charged against me
as a crime—" he went on. "Having spoken
with candour about myself, I have some claim
to be believed when I speak of her; when I
assert that she neither did help me nor could
help me. If there be blame, it is mine only;
if punishment, it is I alone who should
suffer."

He stopped suddenly and grew confused.
It was easy to guard himself from the peril of
looking at Rose, but he could not escape the
hard trial to his self-possession of hearing her,
if she spoke. Just as he pronounced the last
sentence, she raised her face again from his
shoulder, and eagerly "whispered to him:

"No, no, Louis! Not that sacrifice, after
all the others—not that, though you should
force me into speaking to them myself!"

She abruptly quitted her hold of him, and
fronted the whole court in an instant. The
railing in front of her shook with the quivering
of her arms and hands as she held by it
to support herself! Her hair lay tangled on
her shoulders; her face had assumed a strange
fixedness; her gentle blue eyes, so soft and
tender at all other times, were lit up wildly.
A low hum of murmured curiosity and
admiration broke from the women of the audience.
Some rose eagerly from the benches, others
cried,

"Listen, listen! she is going to speak!"

She did speak. Silvery and pure the sweet
voice, sweeter than ever in sadness, stole its
way through the gross sounds—through the
coarse humming and the hissing whispers.

"My lord the president "—began the
poor girl, firmly. Her next words were
drowned in a volley of hisses from the
women.

"Ah! aristocrat, aristocrat! None of
your accursed titles here! " was their shrill
cry at her. She fronted that cry, she fronted
the fierce gestures which accompanied it, with
the steady light still in her eyes, with the
strange rigidity still fastened on her face. She
would have spoken again, through the uproar
and execration, but her brother's voice
overpowered her.

"Citizen president," he cried, " I have not
concluded. I demand leave to complete my