It will be very hard to convict them for it.

The instant the jury feel they are incurring the hatred of the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will not sustain us,--we could not get them to convict for death, nor even for the galleys.

Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few years' imprisonment for the actual murderers.

Better shut our eyes than open them, if by opening them we bring on a collision which costs bloodshed and several thousand francs to the State,--not to speak of the cost of keeping the guilty in prison.

It is too high a price to pay for a victory which will only reveal our judicial weakness to the eyes of all." Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and influence of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention Gaubertin, whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive, though smouldering.