juncture that Vitali received a sudden offer of the Procurator-Generalship at M. His secret admirer, the Bonapartist Prefect, had not forgotten him, and had exercised his influence so diligently that the Minister of Justice had allowed him to sound the Corsican as to his willingness to become a Government servant. Before the Desplans case Vitali would have refused the offer on pecuniary grounds, for his duty towards his father's creditors compelled him to prefer money to honours; but it flashed upon him that if he became Procurator the conduct of the prosecution against Madame Desplans would devolve upon him ex-officio. Now public prosecutors enjoy a good deal of latitude. They receive the commitment writs of the Juges d'Instruction, and it lies within their discretion to suspend proceedings on the ground that the evidence taken before the examining magistrate was insufficient. Or if the case be brought to trial, they can abandon the prosecution in court, declaring that the evidence they have heard has convinced them of the prisoner's' innocence. It is not often that Procurators do this, and Vitali knew: that the Deputy-Procurator of M, who would have charge of the case if he had not, was one of those men who feel professionally bounden to assert a prisoner's guilt to the very end. It sickened him to think that this narrow-headed functionary would slaver the venom of his salaried animus on Clotilde's purity. He reflected that Clotilde would leave the court with a prouder head if her acquitment, instead of being wrung from the jury by a counsel's speech, were brought about by the Public Prosecutor abandoning the charge in the name of Society; and as for getting another advocate to take his place as the prisoner's counsel, this matter, gave him no uneasiness, for he modestly thought that any barrister of heart could defend Clotilde as well as he could. These considerations induced him to call on the Prefect and accept the proffered post.

“Ah, well done!" said the ruler of the Department, motioning him amicably to a seat. "We were in some dread that you would refuse; but remember that this appointment is only the first rung of the ladder which you can climb if you are willing. The elections are coming on, and I may tell you confidentially that if you like to stand in the Bona. partist interest- You are an Imperialist, I believe?"

"Yes," said Vitali, and if I can be of any service to the cause I shall be happy to requite the honour you have done me. But I will frankly tell you why I accept this post," and he proceeded to enounce his reasons with an emotion in breathing Madame Desplans' name which would have struck any observer.

"Oh, oh!" said the Prefect, becoming grave, but speaking with a smile.. "We all know of your partisanship in this celebrated cause, M. Vitali, but let me give you a friend's advice and urge you to keep aloof from Madame Desplans' affairs on undertaking your new duties. Touching as it is to see you champion the suspected pr-lady-so warmly in a private capacity, it might greatly damage your public career, if you began by occasioning a miscarriage of justice.":

"But it would not be a miscarriage of justice!" exclaimed Vitali with animation. "Do you think I would defend Madame Desplans if I deemed her guilty? It is because I would answer for her innocence with my head on the block that I long to set her free and restore her fair fame as a public official speaking for my country."

"That is all very good," responded the Prefect, "but the world would not believe in so much impartiality."

"But they must be brought to believe it."

"My dear M. Vitali, when we cannot go against the stream one had better swim with it."

"What! when that stream is bearing an innocent creature to infamy and death?"

“Come, cɔme, you must really allow me to guide you," said the Prefect with the good-humoured authority of an experienced statesman. "Recollect you are my protégé; I look to you running a very brilliant race, and we must not let you mar it at the start. So if you positively cannot refrain from being romantic and generous, I will have your appointment deferred till the trial is over."

"Ah, it would be no use to me then!" cried Vitali in despair. “It was for her I was going to accept, not for me."

He returned home in very low spirits. The Prefect's manifest conviction of Clotilde's guilt depressed him more than anything he had yet heard from other persons; and for the first time he began to contemplate the possibility of not being able to carry a verdict against public prejudice. Hitherto he had been buoyed up by the confidence that on going into court he would straightway break down the flimsy structure of the prosecution like a house of cards; but what if his eloquence failed?what if the jury were stubborn and closed their eyes to the light of truth that he would thrust before their faces? It chanced that for the past few days there had been a lull in the newspaper comments on the Desplans case. Everything that could be said about the preliminaries of the affair had been said and mis-said, and the public were now taking a rest from conjecture in expectation of the impending final act of the drama. Gloomy presentiments and visions began to pass through Vitali's brain. He saw a densely packed court full of cruel faces, a bench of obstinate judges, a ruthless sentence pronounced amid a silence broken only by the sobs of an innocent prisoner; then a public square with a machine rearing aloft two huge red posts and a knife, a fainting form dragged up the scaffold steps; and the roar of a surging multitude. It was evening and he shivered. The noise of carts passing in the street under his windows suggested tumbrils, and the occasional voices of workmen and boys, singing, that heartless indifference of crowds who go their ways not caring for blood that has been shed, even though it cry to them from the stones.

A knock at his door came in with a letter.

roused Vitali from his reverie, and his servant It bore the stamp of the Palace of Justice.

Vitali's fingers trembled as he tore it open, and he scanned its contents, then staggered, raising his hand to his brow and uttering an awful moan as be read this:

"MY DEAR SIR,

"The preliminary examination of Clotilde Desplans is at an end, and you will be free to visit her to confer about her defence every day dating from to-morrow. I feel some satisfaction in informing you that the prisoner has at length made a confession of her guilt.

"Pray accept the assurances of my regard,

French procedure, as it has been said, isolates a prisoner-cuts him off from all human succour, and leaves him alone with the official inquisitor as a fly with the spider. The Juge d'Instruction weaves a web of evidence round his victim, patiently, laboriously. There is no reason why he should hurry, for the longer time he takes so much the less chance will there be of the prisoner's escape, and it is the Judge's business to convict rather than to judge. When at last the web has been made so strong that not a thread is wanting; when the net seems to encompass the captive on all sides with its serried, symmetrical meshes, then the spider-magistrate opens the door to the counsel for the defence-and the fly-and says complacently, "Now break through my handiwork if

you can!"

When he recovered from his first shock of horror, Vitali decided that Clotilde's confession could only have been wrung from her by moral torture. The tormentor's craft was not abolished when the rack and thumbscrews were done away with, and now, as in old times, innocent persons have been known to plead guilty so as to escape from the sufferings of an endless inquisition. Vitali made no doubt that this was the case with Clotilde. His truly was the faith that removes mountains.

So early on the morrow as he could expect to gain admittance he repaired to the prison. It was ten o'clock, and the morning was bright and balmy, one of the sort that inspires hope. The dismal portals of the gaol opened to receive the advocate; some soldiers lounging in the entrance yard stood aside respectfully and whispered his name to each other, and a turnkey conducted him down a flagged passage into a small white-washed room furnished with a deal table, two rush-bottomed chairs, and a stove. This was the counsel's parlour. It looked pitifully bare, and the iron gate which closed it in lieu of a door (so as to admit of a gendarme's surveillance from without) brought back the minds of visitors implacably to the nature of the building in which they stood.

1

But Justin Vitali forgot that it was a prison. At last, after weeks of anguish that had seemed like years, he was going to see again the woman whose image one brief interview had impressed so ineffaceably on his mind; and at the thought his heart beat like a schoolboy's. Five minutes passed. There were some light steps down the passage; a sister of mercy in black robe and large white-winged cap appeared at the gate, opened it noiselessly with a key at her girdle, and stood back a step while the prisoner entered, then drew the gate back again with a clanging Vitali and Clotilde Desplans stood together alone. snap and vanished.

The prisoner was dressed in a black merino with white collar and cuffs. She was wasted to thinness; her complexion was as wax, and her eyes, preternaturally enlarged, glistened with the fire of inward fever. She was but the shadow of the lovely, smartly dressed little woman who ten weeks previously had introduced herself so abruptly to Vitali; so that as the Corsican gazed at her his heart was moved to its depths, and a violent quivering of his lips spoke to the intensity of the emotion he felt. As for her, she scarcely seemed to recognise her defender. She had seen him but once, and apparently he had not been present in her thoughts night and day ever since, as she had been in his. She looked at him sadly a moment, as if to ask on what errand he had come, then bowed to him with a slight smile and sank into a chair:

"Oh, it's you, M. Vitali," she sighed.

"The sister did not tell me.

I hope you have come to say that all this misery is going to end soon.” "Very soon, I trust," replied Vitali, trying to command his voice, as he took the other chair. "I have come to confer with you about your defence.",

"What is the use of defending me?" she asked, in a tone of utter 'weariness. "They will have it that I am guilty of murder, so I have ended by agreeing with them, in order that they may let me have peace."

"But everybody knows that & confession extorted by such means as have been brought to bear on you is worth nothing." ...Oh, isn't it? I am sorry for that," wailed Clotilde, putting up her hands before her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision. "Anything is better than what I have gone through. To be insulted, threatened, and cross-questioned day after day-to have all the acts of my life twisted into crimes-to be brought to look upon the disinterred bodies of my husband and Captain Lacroix, and to be told that witness upon witness are swearing to my guilt.-Oh!",

"The inhuman fiends!". murmured Vitali, rising and pacing about the room.

"It wasn't kind of them," continued Clotilde plaintively, "for they saw that I was weak and could not answer their ingenious charges. Whenever I opened my lips they told me I was telling untruths. They believed discharged servants sooner than me. It seems I never did a good thing in my life, but have been wicked ever since I was born. Let them put me to death if they please, and the sooner the better, for

they don't suppose I can ever forget these weeks of agony, and what they have left me of life is not worth keeping with such recollections."

"You shall not only live, but your innocence shall be proved spotless as snow!" exclaimed Vitali, whose voice was unsteady, and whose whole frame shook. "I will come to see you every day, Madame Desplans,I am your friend-and will get you acquitted."

"Thank you for saying so-but why should you be my friend? sighed Clotilde incredulously; "you don't know me. You must have the same opinion of me as the rest."

"Before God I believe that no purer woman than you ever trod this earth!" cried Vitali.

"Oh!" murmured Clotilde, and burying her face in her hands she leaned forward over the table and sobbed in a convulsion of grief that seemed as if it would send the soul from the frail body.

A gendarme was pacing to and fro in the flagged passage outside. His yellow baldric flashed before the gate and his sword clanked. The sunbeams that streamed through the grated window of the parlour touched the golden hair of the weeping sufferer with trembling rays as if caressing them, and Justin Vitali leaned against the wall with his arms folded, his face awry with anguish, and his lips murmuring silent prayers which God in heaven heard.

With an abrupt effort shaking off the emotion which paralysed him, he applied himself to the urgent task of restoring hope in his client. She had sunk into the apathy when death appears as a blessed relief, and the idea of degradation attaching to a capital sentence had lost all significance in her eyes after the humiliation which she had already undergone. Vitali talked to her of the future without being able to provoke a spark of interest. He returned to the charge, and declared that almost all her countrymen believed in her innocence, and that she must show herself strong for the day when her justification should be made manifest. But all this failed to move her. At last, however, by a display of the strong interest which he himself took in her, and by bidding her answer to the best of her ability a series of questions he would put, he succeeded in making her dry her eyes and exert her memory, which sufficed momentarily to put despair aside.

"The laudanum which you bought, Madame Desplans, was, I need not ask, to procure the patient rest?"

"Yes; he ordered me to buy it. He used to take several drops at a time to make him sleep. I cannot conjecture whether he took an overdose by intention or accident; for I never suspected he had died by poison until I heard it said here."

"And those letters he wrote?"

"Oh, those letters! they have done nothing else but reproach me with not having posted them," sighed Clotilde, wretchedly. "But it was by Captain Lacroix's orders, given me in moments when he was lucid, that I posted nothing that he wrote while the fits of mania were on him.