"Ah, the Prussian scum!" exclaimed Sambuc, wiping the sweat from his forehead, "he gave us trouble enough! Say, Silvine, light another candle, will you, so we can get a good view of the d--d pig and see what he looks like."
Silvine arose, her wide-dilated eyes shining bright from out her colorless face. She spoke no word, but lit another candle and came and placed it by Goliah's head on the side opposite the other; he produced the effect, thus brilliantly illuminated, of a corpse between two mortuary tapers. And in that brief moment their glances met; his was the wild, agonized look of the supplicant whom his fears have overmastered, but she affected not to understand, and withdrew to the sideboard, where she remained standing with her icy, unyielding air.
"The beast has nearly chewed my finger off," growled Cabasse, from whose hand blood was trickling. "I'm going to spoil his ugly mug for him."
He had taken the revolver from the floor and was holding it poised by the barrel in readiness to strike, when Sambuc disarmed him.
"No, no! none of that. We are not murderers, we francs-tireurs; we are judges. Do you hear, you dirty Prussian? we're going to try you; and you need have no fear, your rights shall be respected. We can't let you speak in your own defense, for if we should unmuzzle you you would split our ears with your bellowing, but I'll see that you have a lawyer presently, and a famous good one, too!"
He went and got three chairs and placed them in a row, forming what it pleased him to call the court, he sitting in the middle with one of his followers on either hand. When all three were seated he arose and commenced to speak, at first ironically aping the gravity of the magistrate, but soon launching into a tirade of blood-thirsty invective.
"I have the honor to be at the same time President of the Court and Public Prosecutor. That, I am aware, is not strictly in order, but there are not enough of us to fill all the roles. I accuse you, therefore, of entering France to play the spy on us, recompensing us for our hospitality with the most abominable treason. It is to you to whom we are principally indebted for our recent disasters, for after the battle of Nouart you guided the Bavarians across the wood of Dieulet by night to Beaumont. No one but a man who had lived a long time in the country and was acquainted with every path and cross-road could have done it, and on this point the conviction of the court is unalterable; you were seen conducting the enemy's artillery over roads that had become lakes of liquid mud, where eight horses had to be hitched to a single gun to drag it out of the slough. A person looking at those roads would hesitate to believe that an army corps could ever have passed over them. Had it not been for you and your criminal action in settling among us and betraying us the surprise of Beaumont would have never been, we should not have been compelled to retreat on Sedan, and perhaps in the end we might have come off victorious. I will say nothing of the disgusting career you have been pursuing since then, coming here in disguise, terrorizing and denouncing the poor country people, so that they tremble at the mention of your name. You have descended to a depth of depravity beyond which it is impossible to go, and I demand from the court sentence of death."
Silence prevailed in the room. He had resumed his seat, and finally, rising again, said:
"I assign Ducat to you as counsel for the defense. He has been sheriff's officer, and might have made his mark had it not been for his little weakness. You see that I deny you nothing; we are disposed to treat you well."
Goliah, who could not stir a finger, bent his eyes on his improvised defender. It was in his eyes alone that evidence of life remained, eyes that burned intensely with ardent supplication under the ashy brow, where the sweat of anguish stood in big drops, notwithstanding the cold.
Ducat arose and commenced his plea. "Gentlemen, my client, to tell the truth, is the most noisome blackguard that I ever came across in my life, and I should not have been willing to appear in his defense had I not a mitigating circumstance to plead, to wit: they are all that way in the country he came from. Look at him closely; you will read his astonishment in his eyes; he does not understand the gravity of his offense. Here in France we may employ spies, but no one would touch one of them unless with a pair of pincers, while in that country espionage is considered a highly honorable career and an extremely meritorious manner of serving the state. I will even go so far as to say, gentlemen, that possibly they are not wrong; our noble sentiments do us honor, but they have also the disadvantage of bringing us defeat. If I may venture to speak in the language of Cicero and Virgil, quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat. You will understand the allusion, gentlemen."
And he took his seat again, while Sambuc resumed:
"And you, Cabasse, have you nothing to say either for or against the defendant?"
"All I have to say," shouted the Provencal, "is that we are wasting a deal of breath in settling that scoundrel's hash. I've had my little troubles in my lifetime, and plenty of 'em, but I don't like to see people trifle with the affairs of the law; it's unlucky. Let him die, I say!"
Sambuc rose to his feet with an air of profound gravity.
"This you both declare to be your verdict, then-death?"
"Yes, yes! death!"
The chairs were pushed back, he advanced to the table where Goliah lay, saying:
"You have been tried and sentenced; you are to die."
The flame of the two candles rose about their unsnuffed wicks and flickered in the draught, casting a fitful, ghastly light on Goliah's distorted features. The fierce efforts he made to scream for mercy, to vociferate the words that were strangling him, were such that the handkerchief knotted across his mouth was drenched with spume, and it was a sight most horrible to see, that strong man reduced to silence, voiceless already as a corpse, about to die with that torrent of excuse and entreaty pent in his bosom.
Cabasse cocked the revolver. "Shall I let him have it?" he asked.
"No, no!" Sambuc shouted in reply; "he would be only too glad." And turning to Goliah: "You are not a soldier; you are not worthy of the honor of quitting the world with a bullet in your head. No, you shall die the death of a spy and the dirty pig that you are."
He looked over his shoulder and politely said:
"Silvine, if it's not troubling you too much, I would like to have a tub."
During the whole of the trial scene Silvine had not moved a muscle. She had stood in an attitude of waiting, with drawn, rigid features, as if mind and body had parted company, conscious of nothing but the one fixed idea that had possessed her for the last two days. And when she was asked for a tub she received the request as a matter of course and proceeded at once to comply with it, disappearing into the adjoining shed, whence she returned with the big tub in which she washed Charlot's linen.
"Hold on a minute! place it under the table, close to the edge."
She placed the vessel as directed, and as she rose to her feet her eyes again encountered Goliah's. In the look of the poor wretch was a supreme prayer for mercy, the revolt of the man who cannot bear the thought of being stricken down in the pride of his strength. But in that moment there was nothing of the woman left in her; nothing but the fierce desire for that death for which she had been waiting as a deliverance. She retreated again to the buffet, where she remained standing in silent expectation.
Sambuc opened the drawer of the table and took from it a large kitchen knife, the one that the household employed to slice their bacon.
"So, then, as you are a pig, I am going to stick you like a pig."
He proceeded in a very leisurely manner, discussing with Cabasse, and Ducat the proper method of conducting the operation. They even came near quarreling, because Cabasse alleged that in Provence, the country he came from, they hung pigs up by the heels to stick them, at which Ducat expressed great indignation, declaring that the method was a barbarous and inconvenient one.