"In your place I should have seen, like you, only my brother, and I
should have been carried away by hope. But I am not in your place. It
is by your voice that this woman speaks, whom I do not know, and against
whom I must be on my guard, for the sole reason that it is a paralytic
who has told this story."

She could not restrain the tears that came to her eyes, and she let them
flow silently, finding nothing to reply.

"I am sorry to pain you," he said.

"I saw only Florentin's liberty."

"I do not say this testimony of Madame Dammauville will not influence the
judge, and, above all, the jury; but I must warn you that you will expose
yourself to a terrible deception if you believe that her testimony alone
will give your brother liberty. It is not on a testimony of this kind or
of this quality that the law decides; better than we, it knows to what
illusions people can lend themselves when it is the question of a crime
that absorbs and excites the public curiosity. There are some witnesses
who, with the best faith in the world, believe they have seen the most
extraordinary things which only existed in their imaginations; and there
are people who accuse themselves rather than say nothing."

He heaped words on words, as if, in trying to convince Phillis, he might
hope to convince himself; but when the sound of his words faded, he was
obliged to declare to himself that, whatever the paralysis of this woman
might be, it had not, in this instance, produced either defect of sight
or of mind. She had seen, indeed, the tall man with long hair and curled