Books: Conscience, v3
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Hector Malot >> Conscience, v3
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For a long time he had been habituated to the sight of death, but when he
found himself in the presence of this woman stretched on her bed as if
she slept, a shiver seized him.
"Give me a mirror and a candle," he said to the maid and the cook who
stood at the door, not daring to enter.
While they went in search of these things he walked over to the stove;
the draught remained as he had turned it on the previous evening; he
opened it and returned to the bed.
His examination was not long; she had succumbed to asphyxiation caused by
the gas from the charcoal. Did it proceed from the construction of the
stove, or from a defect in the chimney? The inquest would decide this;
as for him, he could only prove the death.
On leaving him the evening before, Phillis, uneasy, told him that she
would come early in the morning to know what Madame Dammauville wished.
When he told her she was dead she was prostrated with despair; in that
case Florentin was lost. He tried to reassure her, but without success.
Nougarede, also, was in despair, and regretted that he had not proceeded
otherwise. And he tried to reassure Phillis; the prosecution rested on
the button and the struggle that had torn it off. Saniel would destroy
this hypothesis; he counted on him.
Saniel became, then, as he had been before the intervention of Madame
Dammauville, the only hope of Phillis and her mother, and to encourage
them he exaggerated the influence that his testimony would have.
"When I shall have demonstrated that there was no struggle, the
hypothesis of the torn button will crumble by itself."
"And if it is sustained, how and with what shall we overthrow it?"
If he had appeared as usual, she would have shared the confidence with
which he tried to inspire her; but since the death of Madame Dammauville
he was so changed, that she could not help being uneasy. Evidently it
was Madame Dammauville's death that made him so gloomy and irritable that
he would submit to no opposition. He saw the dangers of the situation
that this death created for Florentin, and with his usual generosity he
reproached himself for not having consented to take care of her sooner;
he would have saved her, certainly, as he had begun by demanding the
removal of the stove, and Florentin would have been saved also.
The day of the trial arrived without a word from Madame Thezard, which
proved that Madame Dammauville had said nothing to her friend. It was
six months since the assassination occurred, and the affair had lost all
interest for the Parisian public; in the provinces it was still spoken
of, but at Paris it was a thing of the past. There is no romance about a
clerk who cuts the throat of his employer to rob him; there is no woman
in the case, no mystery.
Saniel preferred that Phillis should remain at home with her mother, but
in spite of his wishes and prayers she insisted on going to court. She
must be there so that Florentin would see her and take courage; he would
defend himself better if she were there.
He defended himself badly, or at least indifferently, like a man who
gives up because he knows beforehand that whatever he may say will be
useless.
Until Saniel's deposition the witnesses who testified were insignificant
enough, and revealed nothing that was not already known; only Valerius,
with his pretensions to a professional secret, which he developed slowly,
amused the audience. This deposition Saniel made brief and exact,
contenting himself with repeating his report. But then Nougarede rose,
and begged the president to ask the witness to explain the struggle which
should have taken place between the victim and his assassin; and the
president, who had commenced by arguing, before the insistence of the
defence, decided to ask this question. Then Saniel slowly explained how
the position of the body in the armchair and his condition were
scientific proof that there was no struggle.
"This is an opinion," said the president dryly; "the jury will appreciate
it."
"Perfectly," replied Nougarede, "and I intend to make the jury feel the
weight that it carries on the authority of him who formulated it."
This phrase for effect was destined to invalidate in advance the
contradictions that the prosecution would, he believed, raise against the
testimony; but nothing of the kind occurred, and Saniel could go and take
his place beside Phillis without being called to the bar to sustain his
opinion against a physician whose scientific authority would be opposed
to his.
In default of Madame Dammauville, Nougarede had summoned the concierge of
Rue Sainte-Anne, as well as the maid and the cook, who had heard their
mistress say that the man who drew Caffies curtains did not resemble
Florentin's portrait; but this was only gossip repeated by persons of no
importance, who could not produce the effect of the 'coup de theatre' on
which he had based his defence.
When the advocate-general pronounced his address, it was evident why
Saniel's opinion on the absence of a struggle was not contradicted.
Although the prosecution believed in this struggle, it wished to abandon
it a moment, having no need of this hypothesis to prove that the button
had not been torn off on falling from a ladder; it had been done in the
act of assassination, in the effort made to cut the throat of the victim
who had violently extended the right arm, and, by the shock to the
suspenders, the button was torn off. The effect of Saniel's deposition
was destroyed, and that one produced by the testimony of Madame
Dammauville's maids, far less strong, was also destroyed when the
advocate-general proved that this gossip turned against the accused.
She had seen, it was said, a man with long hair and curled beard, draw
the curtains; very well! Does this description apply to the accused?
To tell the truth, it was said that she did not recognize him in a
portrait published by an illustrated paper. Well, it was because this
portrait did not resemble him. Besides, was it possible to admit that a
woman of Madame Dammauville's character would not have informed the judge
if she believed her testimony important and decisive? The proof that she
considered it insignificant was the fact that she had kept silent.
Nougarede's eloquent appeal did not destroy these two arguments, any more
than it effaced the impression produced by the money-lender relative to
the theft of forty-five francs. The jury brought in a verdict of
"Guilty," but without premeditation, and admitting extenuating
circumstances.
On hearing the decree that condemned Florentin to twenty years of forced
labor, Phillis, half suffocated, clung to Saniel's arm; but he could not
give her the attention he wished, for Brigard, who came to the trial to
assist at the triumph of his disciple, accosted him.
"Receive my felicitations for your deposition, my dear friend; it is an
act of courage that does you honor. If this poor boy could have been
saved, it would have been by you; you may well say you are the man of
conscience."
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