For setting, there were bare white walls, which a crucifix dominated. Fronting the audience was the tribunal. There, robed in red, the president and the assessors sat. Before them was a display of exhibits. To the left was the jury. In the dock, to the right, was the prisoner. As I seated myself he looked over at me and smiled, very much as he had in the Library. He seemed as out of place in the Cour d’Assises as he had in the Bibliothèque Nationale. There he had suggested a panther in a conservatory, here a prince in the galleys; and I could not but marvel at the intricacies of the mystery we call life, which had led him from one to the other.
These meditations a greffier interrupted. The indictment was being read. At its conclusion the president turned to the prisoner.
“What have you to say, De Parabole?”
“That you wish my head, monsieur,” the marquis answered, as he arose. “I regret to be unwilling to oblige you with it.”
The president pursed his lips and surveyed the court. “That is natural,” he answered, at last. “But for the moment it is beside the issue. Where were you on the night of the ?”
“That question I have already refused to answer.”
The president pursed his lips again. He reminded me of nothing so much as a salamander. His mouth had the same width and his chin the same recession.
“Yes, I am aware of it,” he continued. “You left the juge d’instruction to infer that you were occupied with some gallant adventure. For the moment we will let that go, too. Meanwhile, you may tell me the object of your separate establishment in the Rue de la Pompe.”
“Experimental researches.”
“That, I am also aware, is your defense. It is not unadroit. It explains the presence there of an arsenal of chemicals. But it does not explain the presence of other things concerning which you shall have an opportunity of enlightening the jury. You have frequently quarreled with the deceased.”
“If,” the marquis answered, “you refer to Madame De Parabole, I do not know that she is dead. Nor,” he added, with entire courtesy, “do you.”
“I at least know that she is not to be found. The prosecution has searched for her everywhere. But the search was not otherwise fruitless. It has been discovered that at the time of your marriage you had nothing but your title. Your wife, previously a widow, was the daughter of a rich Brazilian. Her property you dissipated. That accomplished, you again had nothing but your title. With a view to bartering it anew you devise an elaborate scheme. You give out that you are an alchemist. You fit up a laboratory. You stock it with chemicals. On the evening of you lure your wife there. She drives up to the door in her carriage, dismisses it, and enters the house. She has never been seen since that moment. But later that evening a passer hears a scream. At midnight another passer notices a reflection of flame. What were you doing at that hour?”
“I have forgotten.”
“Very good. I will tell you. You were destroying the remains of your wife whom you had murdered. But you did not destroy them entirely. In a cauldron in that den of yours were discovered, together with bits of bone, some thick, brown ooze in which were traces of caustic soda and caustic potash. Experts will demonstrate that by means of these chemicals a human body can be converted into just such ooze. Do you deny it?”
“On the contrary, it is quite true. Only in this instance it happens that the ooze was the residue of the body of a gorilla which I had obtained from the Jardin d’Acclimatation.”
“That defense you advanced before the juge d’instruction. Inquiries made of the management show that you did acquire a gorilla. But it was only a part of this plot of yours. It was only that, in case of misadventure, you might have a ready answer. In any event, the gorilla obtained by you did not, I suppose, have a tooth filled with a diamond. A tooth set with a diamond was found in that ooze. A tooth filled with a diamond was the peculiar characteristic of the deceased. Here it is. I invite you to be seated.”
“Silence!”
The courtroom, suddenly murmurous with indignation, hummed like a wasp’s nest. I could see men gesticulating. A woman fainted.
“Silence!” a crier repeated.
The prisoner seemed unmoved. A fat man approached and addressed him. I heard someone say that it was Maître Dupin, his advocate.
The president, who had reminded me of a salamander, looked now like a wolf; but a wolf that has fed. Turning to a huissier, he ordered him to call the first witness, and presently the coachman who, on the night of the , had driven the marquise to the Rue de la Pompe was testifying to that effect. He was succeeded by other witnesses—by agents and experts, who corroborated the president’s arraignment. When they had gone the avocat général addressed the jury, summing up the evidence, deducing from it the guilt of the accused, clearly, logically, without oratory or literature.
“Any question of mitigating circumstances,” he concluded, “is out of place in a case such as this. Yet if your conscience hesitates, it is your duty to acquit that man. But if you are absolutely convinced that he is an assassin, it is equally your duty to declare him guilty. I have no wish to say that the blood of his victim cries for vengeance. Of
