Chapter 52

THE TRIAL

"Well, I'll say as you did just now, we'll talk about it when I return, if I do."

"Bless me!" exclaimed Bonaparte, "I'm not afraid; you'll kill him as you have the others; only this time, I must admit, I shall be sorry to have him die."

"If you are going to feel so badly about it, general, I can easily be killed in his stead."

"Don't do anything foolish, ninny!" cried Bonaparte; hastily; "I should feel still worse if I lost you."

"Really, general, you are the hardest man to please that I know of," said Roland with his harsh laugh.

And this time he took his way to Chivasso without further delay.

Half an hour later, Roland was galloping along the road to Ivrae in a post-chaise. He was to travel thus to Aosta, at Aosta take a mule, cross the Saint-Bernard to Martigny, thence to Geneva, on to Bourg, and from Bourg to Paris.

While he is galloping along let us see what has happened in France, and clear up the points in the conversation between Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp which must be obscure to the reader's mind.

The prisoners which Roland had made at the grotto of Ceyzeriat had remained but one night in the prison at Bourg. They had been immediately transferred to that of Besançon, where they were to appear before a council of war.

It will be remembered that two of these prisoners were so grievously wounded that they were carried into Bourg on stretchers. One of them died that same night, the other, three days after they reached Besançon. The number of prisoners was therefore reduced to four; Morgan, who had surrendered himself voluntarily and who was safe and sound, and Montbar, Adler, and d'Assas, who were more or less wounded in the fight, though none of them dangerously. These four aliases hid, as the reader will remember, the real names of the Baron de Sainte-Hermine, the Comte de Jayat, the Vicomte de Valensolle, and the Marquis de Ribier.

While the evidence was being taken against the four prisoners before the military commission at Besançon, the time expired when under the law such cases were tried by courts-martial. The prisoners became accountable therefore to the civil tribunals. This made a great difference to them, not only as to the penalty if convicted, but in the mode of execution. Condemned by a court-martial, they would be shot; condemned by the courts, they would be guillotined. Death by the first was not infamous; death by the second was.

As soon as it appeared that their case was to be brought before a jury, it belonged by law to the court of Bourg. Toward the end of March the prisoners were therefore transferred from the prison of Besançon to that of Bourg, and the first steps toward a trial were taken.

But here the prisoners adopted a line of defence that greatly embarrassed