“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 toward 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 Clery.  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 toward them and toward 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 color 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 candor 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.”