The simultaneous entrance of the court and prisoners produced in this brilliant audience one of those sudden movements which resemble the phenomena of electricity. The whole assemblage rose with one movement; and soon it appeared that the women had the advantage over the men; for all of them, even the most timid, in the excitement of the moment, had sprung upon their chairs. The plebeians in the hindmost ranks, protested with indignant outcries against this screen of hats and shawls, which at such an interesting moment hid from their gaze the spectacle so long and anxiously waited for. Some time elapsed before the constables could restore order and obtain silence: at length the female part of the audience consented to be seated, and the plumed bevy settled down, as the waves of the ocean subside when the tempest which excited them has passed away.
All eyes, however, remained intently fixed upon the two accused, who, in obedience to that principle of equality with which the law regards all its victims, were placed side by side, the gentleman and the galley-slave on the ignominious bench alloted to the prisoners. Two months of captivity, the termination of which might be the scaffold, had impressed upon the features of Arthur deep and visible traces. The elegant young man, who during the preceding winter had obtained in the most brilliant saloons of Bordeaux a success which was due at least as much to his good looks as to his wit, now presented himself to the companions of his happy days, pale, wan, emaciated, and bearing on his countenance the impress of a destiny, the horror of which, while he bowed before its sway, he seemed fully to comprehend. But if his brow appeared colorless, and his eye deprived of the fire which his fair admirers had not unfrequently remarked in them, his countenance had at least lost none of its firmness and noble aspect. Without deigning to cast a look upon the man with whom he found himself coupled, nor upon the audience which, with greedy eyes and ears, he heard murmuring around him, like a pack of hounds yelping over their prey, he exchanged a few words with his counsel, whose friendship and devotion had been of long standing, and seated himself with a composed air, and remained in a fixed attitude, apparently indifferent to what was going on around him.