f fragments, some of the woodwork torn away from the carriage-door of
the Duvillard mansion, some plaster that had fallen from the ceiling, a
paving-stone which the violence of the explosion had split in halves, and
other blackened remnants. The more moving sights, however, were the
milliner's bonnet-box, which had remained uninjured, and a glass jar in
which something white and vague was preserved in spirits of wine. This
was one of the poor errand girl's little hands, which had been severed at
the wrist. The authorities had been unable to place her poor ripped body
on the table, and so they had brought that hand!

At last Salvat rose, and the presiding judge began to interrogate him.
The contrast in the aspect of the court then acquired tragic force: in
the shrouding shade upon one hand were the jurors, their minds already
made up beneath the pressure of public terror, while in the full, vivid
light on the other side was the prisoner, alone and woeful, charged with
all the crimes of his race. Four gendarmes watched over him. He was
addressed by M. de Larombiere in a tone of contempt and disgust. The
judge was not deficient in rectitude; he was indeed one of the last
representatives of the old, scrupulous, upright French magistracy; but he
understood nothing of the new times, and he treated prisoners with the
severity of a Biblical Jehovah. Moreover, the infirmity which was the
worry of his life, the childish lisp which, in his opinion, had alone
prevented him from shining as a public prosecutor, made him ferociously
ill-tempered, incapable of any intelligent indulgence. There were smiles,
which he divined, as soon as he raised his sharp, shrill little voice, to
ask his first questions. That droll voice of his took away whatever
majesty might have remained attached to these proceedings, in which a
man's life was being fought for in a hall full of inquisitive, stifling
and perspiring folks, who fanned themselves and jested. Salvat answered
the judge's earlier questions with his wonted weariness and politeness.
While the judge did everything to vilify him, harshly reproaching him
with his wretched childhood and youth, magnifying every stain and every
transgression in his career, referring to the promiscuity of his life
between Madame Theodore and little Celine as something bestial, he, the
prisoner, quietly said yes or no, like a man who has nothing to hide and
accepts the full responsibility of his actions. He had already