Hisses and cries of execration followed this confession.  He winced under them at first; but recovered his self-possession before silence was restored.

“Citizens, you have heard the confession of my fault,” he resumed, turning with desperate assurance toward the audience; “now hear the atonement I have made for it at the altar of my country.”

He waited at the end of that sentence, until the secretary to the tribunal had done writing it down in the report book of the court.

“Transcribe faithfully to the letter!” cried Danville, pointing solemnly to the open page of the volume.  “Life and death hang on my words.”

The secretary took a fresh dip of ink, and nodded to show that he was ready.  Danville went on: 

“In these times of glory and trial for France,” he proceeded, pitching his voice to a tone of deep emotion, “what are all good citizens most sacredly bound to do?  To immolate their dearest private affections and interests before their public duties!  On the first attempt of my mother to violate the laws against emigration, by escaping from France, I failed in making the heroic sacrifice which inexorable patriotism demanded of me.  My situation was more terrible than the situation of Brutus sitting in judgment on his own sons.  I had not the Roman fortitude to rise equal to it.  I erred, citizens—­erred as Coriolanus did, when his august mother pleaded with him for the safety of Rome!  For that error I deserved to be purged out of the republican community; but I escaped my merited punishment—­nay, I even rose to the honor of holding an office under the Government.  Time passed; and again my mother attempted an escape from France.  Again, inevitable fate brought my civic virtue to the test.  How did I meet this second supremest trial?  By an atonement for past weakness, terrible as the trial itself.  Citizens, you will shudder; but you will applaud while you tremble.  Citizens, look! and while you look, remember well the evidence given at the opening of this case.  Yonder stands the enemy of his country, who intrigued to help my mother to escape; here stands the patriot son, whose voice was the first, the only voice, to denounce him for the crime!” As he spoke, he pointed to Trudaine, then struck himself on the breast, then folded his arms, and looked sternly at the benches occupied by the spectators.

“Do you assert,” exclaimed the president, “that at the time when you denounced Trudaine, you knew him to be intriguing to aid your mother’s escape?”

“I assert it,” answered Danville.

The pen which the president held dropped from his hand at that reply; his colleagues started, and looked at each other in blank silence.

A murmur of “Monster! monster!” began with the prisoners on the platform, and spread instantly to the audience, who echoed and echoed it again; the fiercest woman-republican on the benches joined cause at last with the haughtiest woman-aristocrat on the platform.  Even in that sphere of direst discords, in that age of sharpest enmities, the one touch of Nature preserved its old eternal virtue, and roused the mother-instinct which makes the whole world kin.