for that affair had given the apostles of the Anarchist doctrine
as their references! And that was what the application of Anarchist
theories resulted in--burglary and filth, pending a favourable hour for
wholesale pillage and murder! For nearly a couple of hours the public
prosecutor continued in this fashion, throwing truth and logic to the
winds, and exclusively striving to alarm his hearers. He made all
possible use of the terror which had reigned in Paris, and figuratively
brandished the corpse of the poor little victim, the pretty errand girl,
as if it were a blood-red flag, before pointing to the pale hand,
preserved in spirits of wine, with a gesture of compassionate horror
which sent a shudder through his audience. And he ended, as he had begun,
by inspiriting the jurors, and telling them that they might fearlessly do
their duty now that those at the head of the State were firmly resolved
to give no heed to threats.

Then the young advocate entrusted with the defence in his turn spoke. And
he really said what there was to say with great clearness and precision.
He was of a different school from that of the public prosecutor: his
eloquence was very simple and smooth, his only passion seemed to be zeal
for truth. Moreover, it was sufficient for him to show Salvat's career in
its proper light, to depict him pursued by social fatalities since his
childhood, and to explain the final action of his career by all that he
had suffered and all that had sprung up in his dreamy brain. Was not his
crime the crime of one and all? Who was there that did not feel, if only
in a small degree, responsible for that bomb which a penniless, starving
workman had deposited on the threshold of a wealthy man's abode--a
wealthy man whose name bespoke the injustice of the social system: so
much enjoyment on the one hand and so much privation on the other! If one
of us happened to lose his head, and felt impelled to hasten the advent
of happiness by violence in such troublous times, when so many burning
problems claimed solution, ought he to be deprived of his life in the
name of justice, when none could swear that they had not in some measure
contributed to his madness? Following up this question, Salvat's counsel
dwelt at length on the period that witnessed the crime, a period of so
many scandals and collapses, when the old world was giving birth to a new
one amidst the most terrible struggles and pangs. And he concluded by
begging the j