The principal article of furniture in the Hall of Justice was a long, clumsy, deal table, covered with green baize.  At the head of this table sat the president and his court, with their hats on, backed by a heterogeneous collection of patriots officially connected in various ways with the proceedings that were to take place.  Below the front of the table, a railed-off space, with a gallery beyond, was appropriated to the general public—­mostly represented, as to the gallery, on this occasion, by women, all sitting together on forms, knitting, shirt-mending, and baby-linen-making, as coolly as if they were at home.  Parallel with the side of the table furthest from the great door of entrance was a low platform railed off, on which the prisoners, surrounded by their guard, were now assembled to await their trial.  The sun shone in brightly from a high window, and a hum of ceaseless talking pervaded the hall cheerfully as Lomaque entered it.  He was a privileged man here, as at the prison; and he made his way in by a private door, so as to pass to the prisoners’ platform, and to walk round it, before he got to a place behind the president’s chair.  Trudaine, standing with his sister on the outermost limits of the group, nodded significantly as Lomaque looked up at him for an instant.  He had contrived, on his way to the tribunal, to get an opportunity of reading the paper which the chief agent had slipped into his cravat.  It contained these lines: 

“I have just discovered who the citizen and citoyenne Dubois are.  There is no chance for you but to confess everything.  By that means you may inculpate a certain citizen holding authority, and may make it his interest, if he loves his own life, to save yours and your sister’s.”

Arrived at the back of the president’s chair, Lomaque recognized his two trusty subordinates, Magloire and Picard, waiting among the assembled patriot officials, to give their evidence.  Beyond them, leaning against the wall, addressed by no one, and speaking to no one, stood the superintendent, Danville.  Doubt and suspense were written in every line of his face; the fretfulness of an uneasy mind expressed itself in his slightest gesture—­even in his manner of passing a handkerchief from time to time over his face, on which the perspiration was gathering thick and fast already.

“Silence!” cried the usher of the court for the time being—­a hoarse-voiced man in top-boots with a huge saber buckled to his side, and a bludgeon in his hand.  “Silence for the Citizen President!” he reiterated, striking his bludgeon on the table.

The president rose and proclaimed that the sitting for the day had begun; then sat down again.

The momentary silence which followed was interrupted by a sudden confusion among the prisoners on the platform.  Two of the guards sprang in among them.  There was the thump of a heavy fall—­a scream of terror from some of the female prisoners—­then another dead silence, broken by one of the guards, who walked across the hall with a bloody knife in his hand, and laid it on the table.  “Citizen President,” he said, “I have to report that one of the prisoners has just stabbed himself.”  There was a murmuring exclamation, “Is that all?” among the women spectators, as they resumed their work.  Suicide at the bar of justice was no uncommon occurrence, under the Reign of Terror.