7 (8)
ADMISSION BY FAVOUR
THE JUDGE OF THE ROYAL COURT of Douai, who was providing over this session at Arras, was familiar, as well as everybody else, with this name so profoundly and so universally honoured. When the officer quietly opening the door which led from the counsel chamber to the court room, bent behind the judge’s chair and handed him the paper, on which was written the line we have just read, adding: “This gentleman desires to witness the trial, the judge made a hasty movement of deference, seized a pen, wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper and handed it back to the officer, saying to him: ”Let him enter.”
The unhappy man, whose story we are telling, had remained near the door of the hall, in the same place and the same posture as when the officer left him. He heard, through his thoughts, some one saying to him: “Will monsieur do me the honour to follow me?” It was the same officer who had turned his back upon him the minute before, and who now bowed to the earth before him. The officer at the same time handed him the paper. He unfolded it, and, as he happened to be near the lamp, he could read:
“The Judge of the Circuit Court presents his respects to Monsieur Madeleine.”
He crushed the paper in his hands, as if those few words had left some strange and bitter taste behind.
He followed the officer.
In a few minutes he found himself alone in a kind of panelled cabinet, of a severe appearance, lighted by two wax candles placed upon a table covered with green cloth. The last words of the officer who had left him still rang in his ear: “Monsieur, you are now in the counsel chamber; you have but to turn the brass knob of that door and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the judge’s chair.” These words were associated in his thoughts with a vague remembrance of the narrow corridors and dark stairways through which he had just passed.
The officer had left him alone. The decisive moment had arrived. He endeavoured to collect his thoughts, but did not succeed. At those hours especially when we have sorest need of grasping the poignant realities of life do the threads of thought snap off in the brain. He was in the very place where the judges deliberate and pass sentence. He beheld with a stupid tranquillity that silent and formidable room where so many existences had been terminated, where his own name would be heard so soon, and which his destiny was crossing at this moment. He looked at the walls, then he looked at himself, astonished that this could be this room, and that this could be he.
The handle of the door, round and of polished brass, shone out before him like an ominous star. He looked at it as a lamb might look at the eye of a tiger.
His eyes could not move from it.
From time to time, he took another step towards the door.
Had he listened, he would have heard, as a kind of confused murmur, the noise of the neighbouring hall; but he did not listen and he did not hear.
Suddenly, without himself knowing how, he found himself near the door, he seized the knob convulsively; the door opened.
He was in the court-room.