The Royal Court was sitting late. Candles had been brought to light
the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the
twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk,
mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with
capital crimes. His work was over, and according to his lights he had
done it well. Not even the Undertaker's Apprentice could have been less
sensitive to the struggles of humanity under the heel of fate and death.
A plaintive complacency, a little righteous austerity, and an agreeable
expression of hunger made the Attorney-General a figure in godly contrast
to the prisoner awaiting his doom in the iron cage opposite.

There was a singular stillness in this sombre Royal Court, where only a
tallow candle or two and a dim lanthorn near the door filled the room
with flickering shadows-great heads upon the wall drawing close together,
and vast lips murmuring awful secrets. Low whisperings came through the
dusk like mournful nightwinds carrying tales of awe through a heavy
forest. Once in the long silence a figure rose up silently, and stealing
across the room to a door near the jury box, tapped upon it with a
pencil. A moment's pause, the door opened slightly, and another shadowy
figure appeared, whispered, and vanished. Then the first figure closed
the door again silently, and came and spoke softly up to the Bailly, who
yawned in his hand, sat back in his chair, and drummed his fingers upon
the arm. Thereupon the other--the greffier of the court--settled down at
his desk beneath the jurats, and peered into an open book before him, his
eyes close to the page, reading silently by the meagre light of a candle
from the great desk behind him.

Now a fat and ponderous avocat rose up and was about to speak, but the
Bailly, with a peevish gesture, waved him down, and he settled heavily