Where the Light Falls(75)
The crowds in the gallery were beginning to murmur, sounds of tenuous agreement and assent. Jean-Luc allowed this side noise to occur before he spoke again, his voice calm.
“The past two years have seen many guilty men earn their tumbril rides to the guillotine. Some here now say that General Kellermann deserves such a fate. What is their proof? What is his crime? If uniting the soldiers and people of France, and leading them bravely against our real enemies, is a crime, then yes, General Kellermann is guilty. If beating back the foreign hosts, driving them back to their own borders, is a crime, then yes, he is guilty.
“But I must ask you: do these sound like the actions of a man who sympathizes with a dead and deposed tyrant?”
The crowd was now muttering audibly, their responses clearly in the young lawyer’s favor. Someone in the gallery, a red-capped revolutionary who had arrived this morning eager to condemn the accused general, now shouted out: “Vive Kellermann! Long live Kellermann!” and the entire gallery erupted in applause.
Down below, André glanced at Sophie, and he couldn’t help but smile. The soldiers around him, too, were shifting in their seats, bolstered by the sympathy that the defense’s attorney had managed to carve out among the crowd.
Across the aisle from André, Lazare exchanged a meaningful look with Murat. What was his expression—annoyance? Acknowledgment of defeat? André felt a flicker of hope in his chest, and he guessed that, beside him, Madame Kellermann felt the same.
Jean-Luc raised his arms and the volume of his voice, driving his argument forward on the wave of the crowd’s enthusiasm. “My friends, you know Christophe Kellermann. You are the very patriots who hoisted him atop your shoulders! Who declared him, rightly so, to be the Savior of our Revolution! And so I say to you: if and only if fighting and shedding blood in defense of the Republic is a crime, then my client is guilty!”
The crowd now broke out into applause. At this Murat stood up, thundering: “Pretty words from a young lawyer fresh out of the schoolhouse. How much blood have you shed for France?”
Hearing this insult, the crowd erupted in laughter, momentarily distracted from the stirring rhetoric of the defense. André looked to the judges, fearing that all the momentum built up thus far might be lost if order wasn’t restored quickly.
“Out of order!” The central judge clanged his bell while the crowds continued to laugh and carry on their side conversations. “This court will come to order now, or be dismissed.” The room fell quiet.
“All right.” The elderly judge glared at the room, his plumed hat off-center and his face red. “I think we’ve heard enough from the defense. Have you anything more to add?”
“That is all, Your Honor.” Jean-Luc bowed his head.
“Good.” The justice puffed out his cheeks, exhaling. “The defense rests.”
Turning on his heels, Jean-Luc marched toward the table and took a seat beside his client.
“Right, then, let’s hear from the prosecution. Citizen Lazare?”
Lazare stood up, slowly, clearing his throat. His pale hair, almost as colorless as his powdered face, was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and he wore the tricolor cockade on his lapel. “Your Honor, stating our case will be one of my legal deputies, the attorney Guy Mouchetard.”
“Very well. Citizen Mouchetard?”
With that, one of Lazare’s disciples, a man with a protruding chin and beady eyes, pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. Another good sign, André thought; surely Lazare himself would be speaking if the case was worthwhile or truly significant to him. The defense stood a much better chance against this surrogate, and surely Lazare knew that—and yet he had allowed it.
The man, about the same age as Jean-Luc but several inches shorter, walked slowly to the center of the room, his heels clicking on the wooden floor. Pausing, he turned and looked out over the crowd. He took a pair of spectacles from a front pocket and slid them up his nose, pausing a moment before the waiting audience. When he spoke, his voice was loud, yet also quite shrill compared to Jean-Luc’s.
“At the outset of this new and noble Republic, we arrested a tyrant and his lascivious wife. The tyrant was brought to justice by this same court, the same people. The people of Paris. The people of France.” The lawyer’s mannerisms were jerky, his cadence irregular.
“Centuries marked by crimes, debt, terror, and usurpation were exposed. When the ermine robe was removed from Capet’s royal person, we saw him for what he was: a spoiled and incompetent brat, exploiting the French people. Growing fat off the misery of those he professed to love.”