"Yes, poor Filon--it will go hard with him. His crime is a black one."

"I should think it was--implicating _le petit_!"

"Dame! the judge doesn't seem to be of your mind."

"Ah--h!" cried a florid Vandyke-bearded man, the dynamite bomb of
the table, exploding with a roar of rage. "_Ah--h, cre nom de
Dieu!--Messieurs les presidents_ are all like that; they are always
on the side of the innocent--"

"Till they prove them guilty."

"Guilty! guilty!" the bomb exploded in earnest now. "How many times in
the annals of crime is a man guilty--really guilty? They should search
for the cause--and punish that. That is true justice. The instigator,
the instigator--he is the true culprit. Inheritances--_voila les vrais
coupables_. But when are such things investigated? It is ever the
innocent who are punished. I know something of that--I do."

"_Allons--allons!_" cried the table, laughing at the beard's vehemence.
"When were you ever under sentence?"

"When I was doing my duty," the beard hurled back with both arms in the
air; "when I was doing my three years--I and my comrade; we were
convicted--punished--for an act of insubordination we never committed.
Without a trial, without a chance of defending ourselves, we were put
on two crumbs of bread and a glass of water for two months. And we were
innocent--as innocent as babes, I tell you."