Yet this man found a strange advocate, no less a person than Raymond Latour.  The prosecution was short and convincing; the president’s bell sounded with a sense of finality in it; the women in the gallery were ready to jeer at the next prisoner; in this case of Bruslart there was no excitement at all.  Then Raymond Latour rose, and the loud murmur of astonishment quickly fell into silence.  They had often heard and applauded Deputy Latour; what was he doing here?  There was going to be excitement after all.

Raymond Latour was an orator, rough and passionate at times, yet seldom failing to get into sympathy with his audience.  He looked at the white-faced, cringing prisoner, and he hated him, yet on his behalf he spoke more eloquently than he had ever done before perhaps.  A less powerful advocate would not have been listened to.  Latour’s words were hung upon and applauded at intervals.  He could not deny the charges brought against the prisoner; he was an aristocrat, he had helped an emigre, but he was not the only aristocrat who had become a true and worthy patriot.  He had done many things which deserved acknowledgment.  His apartment had always been open to his fellows, he had helped many with his money and his influence.  Birth had made him an aristocrat, but he had not fled from Paris; he had stayed to champion the people.  That surely was in his favor, seeing how powerful an incentive he had for crossing the frontier—­love.  Of all the charges brought against him, there was only one which counted—­that he had helped an emigre.  Citizens might hiss, but ought they not first to understand who this emigre was?  She was, to begin with, an emigre against her will.  She had been forced to leave Paris by her friends, by the Marquise de Rovere.  That was known to many who listened to him.  Mademoiselle St. Clair was known personally to many.  She had fed the hungry; she had cared for the poor.  Had she remained in Paris, not a hand would have been raised against her, and if it had been, a thousand would have been raised in her defense.  True, she had become an emigre; true, she had entered Paris by stealth, and that might require some explanation were he defending her, but he was only speaking for the man who had hidden her.  They must remember all the circumstances.  It was said that mademoiselle had heard that her lover was in danger, and had returned to help him.  Every woman would appreciate her action, every woman who had loved; the prisoner finding her in danger had hidden her, could not every lover understand his doing so?  Here was no conspiracy against the people but a romance, a tale of lovers, which some poet might well make a song of for all true lovers to sing.  Certainly Lucien Bruslart was not deserving of death.

There was applause when Latour finished, but many hisses.  A woman’s voice cried out that it appeared as though Citizen Latour loved the emigre himself, and laughter and a nodding of heads greeted the sally.  A man shouted that Deputy Latour had ceased to be a true patriot, or he would never have spoken for such a prisoner.  There was uproar, silenced by the president’s bell—­a pause, then sentence:—­Lucien Bruslart was condemned.  No eloquence in the world could have saved him.