Mr. Justice Chaussepied.

HITHERTO blinded by fear, incautious and stupid before the bands of Friar Douillard and the partisans¹ of Prince Crucho, the Republicans at last opened their eyes and grasped the real meaning of the Pyrot affair. The deputies who had for two years turned pale at the shouts of the patriotic² crowds became, not indeed more courageous³, but altered their cowardice⁴ and blamed Robin⁵ Mielleux for disorders⁶ which their own compliance⁷ had encouraged, and the instigators of which they had several times slavishly congratulated. They reproached him for having imperilled the Republic by a weakness which was really theirs and a timidity which they themselves had imposed upon him. Some of them began to doubt whether it was not to their interest to believe in Pyrot’s innocence⁸ rather than in his guilt⁹, and thence-forward they felt a bitter anguish¹⁰ at the thought that the unhappy man might have been wrongly convicted and that in his aerial cage he might be expiating¹¹ another man’s crimes. “I cannot sleep on account of it!” was what several members of Minister Guillaumette’s majority used to say. But these were ambitious to replace their chief.

These generous legislators overthrew¹² the cabinet, and the President of the Republic put in Robin Mielleux’s place, a patriarchal Republican with a flowing beard, La Trinite by name, who, like most of the

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