to
bring about an understanding...."

During the fifteen sittings of the court a restless crowd filled the
hall, the courts of the Palais, and the narrow streets leading to it. At
eight o'clock in the morning of December 30th, the president, Carel,
declared the trial closed, and the court retired to "form its opinions."
Not till three o'clock did the bell announce the return of the
magistrates. The verdict was immediately pronounced. Capital punishment
was the portion of Mme. Acquet, Flierle, Lefebre, Harel, Grand-Charles,
Fleur d'Epine, Le Hericey, Gautier-Boismale, Lemarchand and Alexandre
Buquet. The Marquise de Combray was condemned to twenty-two years'
imprisonment in irons, and so were Lerouge, called Bornet, Vannier and
Bureau-Placene. The others were acquitted, but had to be detained "for
the decision of his Excellency, the minister-of-police." The Marquise
was, besides, to restore to the treasury the total sum of money taken.
Whilst the verdict was being read, the people crowded against the
barriers till they could no longer move, eagerly scanning the
countenances of the two women. The old Marquise, much agitated,
declaimed in a loud voice against the Procurer-General: "Ah! the
monster! The scoundrel! How he has treated us!"

Mme. Acquet, pale and impassive, seemed oblivious of what was going on
around her. When she heard sentence of death pronounced against her, she
turned towards her defender, and Chauveau-Lagarde, rising, asked for a
reprieve for his client. Although she had been in prison for fourteen
months, she was, he said, "in an interesting condition." There was a
murmur of astonishment in the hall, and while, during the excitement
caused by this declaration, the court deliberated on the reprieve, one
of the condemned, Le Hericey, leapt over the bar, fell with all his
weight on the first rows of spectators, and by kicks and blows, aided by
the general bewilderment, made a path for himself through the crowd, and
amid shouts and shoves had already reached the door when a gendarme
nabbed him in passing and threw him back into the hall, where, trampled
on and overcome with blows, he was pushed behind the bar and taken away
with the other condemned prisoners. The reprieve asked for Mme. Acquet
was pronounced in the midst of the tumult, the crush at the door of the
great hall being so great that many were injured.

The verdict, which soon became known all over the town, was in general
ill received. If th