ed 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.

"Name?" asked the president, quietly taking up his pen and opening a
book.

"Martigne," answered the humpbacked jailer, coming forward to the table.

"Description?"

"Ex-royalist coach-maker to the tyrant Capet."

"Accusation?"

"Conspiracy in prison."

The president nodded, and entered in the book: "Martigne, coachmaker.
Accused