saving me from the consequences of my own folly.  Was that a crime, citizens?  When you are ailing, do not your mothers, sisters, wives tend you? when you are seriously ill, would they not give their heart’s blood to save you? and when, in the dark hours of your lives, some deed which you would not openly avow before the world overweights your soul with its burden of remorse, is it not again your womenkind who come to you, with tender words and soothing voices, trying to ease your aching conscience, bringing solace, comfort, and peace?  And so it was with the accused, citizens.  She had seen my crime, and longed to punish it; she saw those who had befriended her in sorrow, and she tried to ease their pain by taking my guilt upon her shoulders.  She has suffered for the noble lie, which she had told on my behalf, as no woman has ever been made to suffer before.  She has stood, white and innocent as your new-born children, in the pillory of infamy.  She was ready to endure death, and what was ten thousand times worse than death, because of her own warm-hearted affection.  But you, citizens of France, who, above all, are noble, true, and chivalrous, you will not allow the sweet impulses of young and tender womanhood to be punished with the ban of felony.  To you, women of France, I appeal in the name of your childhood, your girlhood, your motherhood; take her to your hearts, she is worthy of it, worthier now for having blushed before you, worthier than any heroine in the great roll of honour of France.”

His magnetic voice went echoing along the rafters of the great, sordid Hall of Justice, filling it with a glory it had never known before.  His enthusiasm thrilled his hearers, his appeal to their honour and chivalry roused all the finer feelings within them.  Still hating him for his treason, his magical appeal had turned their hearts towards her.

They had listened to him without interruption, and now at last, when he paused, it was very evident, by muttered exclamations and glances cast at Juliette, that popular feeling, which up to the present had practically ignored her, now went out towards her personality with overwhelming sympathy.

Obviously at the present moment, if Juliette’s fate had been put to the plebiscite, she would have been unanimously acquitted.

Merlin, as Deroulede spoke, had once or twice tried to read his friend Foucquier-Tinville’s enigmatical expression, but the Public Prosecutor, with his face in deep shadow, had not moved a muscle during the Citizen-Deputy’s noble peroration.  He sat at his desk, chin resting on hand, staring before him with an expression of indifference, almost of boredom.

Now, when Deroulede finished speaking, and the outburst of human enthusiasm had somewhat subsided, he rose slowly to his feet, and said quietly: 

“So you maintain, Citizen-Deputy, that the accused is a chaste and innocent girl, unjustly charged with immorality?”