ATTORNEY-GENERAL. It will mean acquittal.

VAGRET. What would you have?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Do as you wish; but I should like to tell you one thing. When a man plans a startling trick of this kind and has the courage to accomplish it entirely of his own accord, he must have the courage to accept the sole responsibility of the blunders he may commit.

You are too clever; you want to discover some means by which you need not be the only one to suffer from the consequences of your vacillations.

VAGRET. Clever? I? How?

ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Come, come! We are not children, and I can perfectly well see the trap into which you have lured me. You are sheltering yourself behind me. If the Chancellery should complain of your att.i.tude, you will say that you consulted your superior, and I shall be the victim. And then I shall have a quarrel with the Chancellery on my hands. You don't care, you don't think of my position or my interests, of which you know nothing. Some silly idea gets into your head, and against my will you want to make me responsible for it. I say again, it is extremely clever, and I congratulate you, but I don't thank you.

VAGRET. You have misunderstood me, sir. I have no wish to burden you with the responsibilities I am about to a.s.sume. I should hardly choose the moment when I am on the point of being appointed Councillor to perpetrate such a blunder. I told you of my perplexity, and I asked your advice. That was all.

THE PRESIDENT. Are you certain one way or the other?

VAGRET. If I were certain, should I ask advice? [_A pause_] If we only had a cause for ca.s.sation, a good--

THE PRESIDENT [_enraged_] What's that you say? Cause for ca.s.sation?

Based on an error or on an oversight on my part, no doubt! Really, you have plenty of imagination! You are attacked by certain doubts, certain scruples--I don't know what--and in order to quiet your morbidly distracted conscience you ask me kindly to make myself the culprit!

Convenient, in truth, to foist on others who have done their duty the blunders one may have committed oneself!

ATTORNEY-GENERAL [_quietly_] It is indeed.

THE PRESIDENT. And at the Chancellery, when they mention me, they'll say, "Whatever sort of a councillor is this, who hasn't even the capacity to preside over an a.s.size Court at Mauleon!" A man whom we've taken such trouble to get condemned! And to make me, me, the victim of such trickery! No, no! Think of another way, my dear Monsieur; you won't employ that, I can a.s.sure you.

VAGRET. Then I shall seek other means; but I shall not leave matters in their present state.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Do what you like, but realize that I have given you no advice in one direction or another.

VAGRET. I realize that.

THE PRESIDENT. When you have decided to resume the hearing you will notify us.

VAGRET. I will notify you.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL [_to the President_] Let us go.

_They leave the office._

SCENE IX:--_Vagret, Madame Vagret._

MADAME VAGRET. What is it?

VAGRET. Nothing.

MADAME VAGRET. Nothing? You are so depressed--and yet you've just had such a success as will tell on your career.

VAGRET. It is that success which alarms me.

MADAME VAGRET. Alarms you?

VAGRET. Yes, I'm afraid--

MADAME VAGRET. Afraid of what?

VAGRET. Of having gone too far.

MADAME VAGRET. Too far! Doesn't the murderer deserve death ten times over?

VAGRET [_after a pause_] Are you quite certain, yourself, that he is a murderer?

MADAME VAGRET. Yes.

VAGRET [_in a low voice_] Well--for myself--

MADAME VAGRET. You?

VAGRET. I--I don't know. I know nothing.

MADAME VAGRET. My G.o.d!

VAGRET. A dreadful thing happened to me in the course of my indictment.

While I, the State Attorney, the official prosecutor, was exercising my function, another self was examining the case calmly, in cold blood; an inner voice kept reproaching me for my violence and insinuating into my mind a doubt, which has gone on increasing. A painful struggle has been going on in my mind, a cruel struggle--and if, as I was finishing, I labored under that emotion of which the President was speaking, if when I demanded the death penalty my voice was scarcely audible, it was because I was at the end of my struggle; because my conscience was on the point of winning the battle, and I made haste to finish, because I was afraid it would speak out against my will. When I saw the advocate remain seated and that he was not going to resume his speech in order to tell the jury the things I would have had him tell them--then I was really afraid of myself, afraid of my actions, of my words, of their terrible consequences, and I wanted to gain time.

MADAME VAGRET. But, my dear, you have done your duty; if the advocate has not done his, that does not concern you.

VAGRET. Always the same reply. If I were an honest man I should tell the jury, when the hearing is resumed, of the doubts that have seized me. I should explain how those doubts arose in me; I should call their attention to a point which I deliberately concealed from them, because I believed the counsel for the defence would point it out to him.

MADAME VAGRET. You know, my dear, how thoroughly I respect your scruples, but allow me to tell you all the same that it won't be you who will declare Etchepare guilty or not guilty; it will be the jury. If anyone ought to feel disturbed, it is Maitre Placat, not you--

VAGRET. But I ought to represent justice!

MADAME VAGRET. Here is a prisoner who comes before you with previous convictions, with a whole crushing series of circ.u.mstances establishing his guilt. He is defended by whom? By one of the ornaments of the Bar, a man famed for his conscience as much as for his ability and his oratorical skill. You expound the facts to the jury. If the jury agrees with you, I cannot see that your responsibility as a magistrate is involved.

VAGRET. I don't think about my responsibility as a magistrate--but my responsibility as a man is certainly involved! No! No! I have not the right. I tell you there is a series of circ.u.mstances in this case of which no one has spoken and the nature of which makes me believe in the innocence of the accused.

MADAME VAGRET. But--these circ.u.mstances--how was it you knew nothing of them until now?

VAGRET [_his head drooping_] Do you think I did know nothing of them? My G.o.d! Shall I have the courage to tell you everything? I am not a bad man, am I? I wouldn't wish anyone to suffer for a fault of mine--but--oh, I am ashamed to admit it, to say it aloud, even, when I have admitted it to myself! Well, when I was studying the brief, I had got it so firmly fixed in my mind, to begin with, that Etchepare was a criminal, that when an argument in his favor presented itself to my mind, I rejected it utterly, shrugging my shoulders. As for the facts of which I am speaking, and which gave rise to my doubts--at first I simply tried to prove that those facts were false, taking, from the depositions of the witnesses, only that which would militate against their truth and rejecting all the rest, with a terrible simplicity of bad faith. And in the end, in order to dissipate my last scruples, I told myself, just as you told me, "That is the business of the defence; it isn't mine!"

Listen, and you'll see to what point the exercise of the magistrate's office distorts our natures, makes us unjust and cruel. At first I had a feeling of delight when I saw that the President, in his cross-examination, was throwing no light whatever on this series of little facts. It was my profession speaking in me, my profession, do you see? Oh, what poor creatures we are, what poor creatures!

MADAME VAGRET. Perhaps the jury won't find him guilty?

VAGRET. It will find him guilty.

MADAME VAGRET. Or it may find there are extenuating circ.u.mstances.

VAGRET. No. I adjured them too earnestly to refuse to do so. I was zealous enough, wasn't I? Violent enough?