me."

"I will return later, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot. "Though business
is pressing----"

"No, stay," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A magistrate,
monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was in
fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----"

Camusot bowed apologetically.

"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life.
A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of
my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de
Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy,
the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking
it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy's bedside,
fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably insane.
Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she has two
nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have spent,
between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair. And a
statesman's despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as calm as
if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force
himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the
brows bent by so much hard thought.--Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed
from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-past eight
to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur Camusot, when a
judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of sorrow, feeling the
heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and heaviest on noble souls,
it is hard to sit down here, in front of a desk, and say in cold blood,
'Cut off a head at four o'clock! Destroy one of God's creatures full
of life, health, and strength!'--And yet this is my duty! Sunk in grief
myself, I must order the scaffold----

"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal
to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I,
society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same
duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by the
sword of the law.

"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is
to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given to
God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country's sake, seem
to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears and
appalling responsibility.

"You know