and discussed their nocturnal expeditions as if they had been
mere pleasure-parties.

Lepretre, Hyvert, Amiet and Guyon were arraigned before the tribunal
of a neighboring department. No one save the Treasury had suffered
from their attack, and there was no one to identify them save the
lady who took very good care not to do so. They were therefore
acquitted unanimously.

Nevertheless, the evidence against them so obviously called for
conviction, that the Ministry was forced to appeal from this
decision. The verdict was set aside; but such was the government's
vacillation, that it hesitated to punish excesses that might
on the morrow be regarded as virtues. The accused were cited
before the tribunal of Ain, in the city of Bourg, where dwelt a
majority of their friends, relatives, abettors and accomplices.
The Ministry sought to propitiate the one party by the return
of its victims, and the other by the almost inviolate safeguards
with which it surrounded the prisoners. The return to prison
indeed resembled nothing less than a triumph.

The trial recommenced. It was at first attended by the same results
as the preceding one. The four accused were protected by an alibi,
patently false, but attested by a hundred signatures, and for
which they could easily have obtained ten thousand. All moral
convictions must fail in the presence of such authoritative
testimony. An acquittal seemed certain, when a question, perhaps
involuntarily insidious, from the president, changed the aspect
of the trial.