She was jealous of the woman, who had tried to take her lover from her.

He was a soldier, coarse in manners, and always drunk.
M.Daburon felt himself seized with pity for this miserable creature, whom he had commenced to examine the day before.

She was very ugly, in fact truly repulsive; but the expression of the eyes, when speaking of her soldier, returned to the magistrate's memory.
"She loves him sincerely," thought he.

"If each one of the jurors had suffered what I am suffering now, she would be acquitted.

But how many men in this world have loved passionately?
Perhaps not one in twenty." He resolved to recommend this girl to the indulgence of the tribunal, and to extenuate as much as possible her guilt.
For he himself had just determined upon the commission of a crime.