Where the Light Falls(94)

Guillaume Lazare, the same attorney who had haunted André’s loved ones in recent years, had been enlisted to convict him. Hired by Murat, no doubt. This, André supposed, made it all the more likely that he would be tried quickly and condemned to death. Jean-Luc St. Clair had stood up as a trial defense attorney only one other time in his young career; the outcome of that case, as everyone in Paris knew, had resulted in a good man being sent to the guillotine.

Aware of this grim precedent, and sensing the hatred his accusers had for him, André found it impossible to retain any hope. This hostile courtroom, combined with the morning’s news from Sophie, had finally done what all those months in Le Temple had failed to do: André despaired, certain that he was a doomed man.

A powerful wave of resignation suddenly swept through him, overpowering his senses. The noises of the crowd, the shrill ringing of the magistrate’s bell for silence, the stomping of hundreds of feet—it all receded. With this surrender came, surprisingly, a feeling of sudden weightlessness. Relief. He could finally give up fighting. He could sense the creeping shadow of death but no longer felt fear at its approach, for death would be the end of his suffering.

So consumed was André by this sudden realization of his own defeat, the recognition that, for him, the torment was over, that he became momentarily blinded to the developments unfolding before him in court.

André did not notice how Jean-Luc St. Clair—seasoned from his inaugural and failed attempt to win over a courtroom and best the masterful Guillaume Lazare—spun a narrative of the Battle of Valmy to sway the stone-faced jurors and spectators. The way Jean-Luc St. Clair spoke of a young man, having renounced a noble name that he had never chosen for himself, who wore the blue coat of a soldier before the nation had even gone to war. Had he been listening, André Valière might have supposed that his lawyer was describing Christophe Kellermann, but no, the lawyer was describing André Valière. And the lawyer was fighting this case as if his own life depended on it. André’s death would be the end of him, he knew it. Just as André’s deliverance would be his own salvation.

Moving with confidence and clarity through his argument, Jean-Luc St. Clair continued to the topic of another one of the Republic’s recently discovered heroes: General Napoleon Bonaparte. Jean-Luc described, in vivid language, the night of the uprisings across Paris, when royalists had besieged the Tuileries and nearly taken back the capital. How he, Jean-Luc St. Clair, had been standing on the bridge when Bonaparte himself had ridden past on his way to save Paris from these enemies of the Revolution.

Pausing, perhaps as much to build suspense as to wipe the sweat from his brow, Jean-Luc went on to describe how Bonaparte had raised his sword and cried out: “For France!” The crowd throughout the hall began to murmur, even nod, when the lawyer recounted how the young Corsican general had rallied the people in the face of that threat, and when Jean-Luc remarked that Bonaparte would now be taking that rallying cry abroad, to punish the enemies who had threatened to quash the noble Revolution, some began to cheer.

This panel of jurymen were as patriotic as the most fervent citizens in the land, Jean-Luc asserted. They knew that General Bonaparte’s call for men must be answered. How then, as patriots, could they sit here and send a man, a soldier, and a hero such as André Valière to the guillotine? How could they rob Bonaparte, and the French nation, of such a seasoned fighter?

The mood in the courtroom was shifting around André, but he noticed none of this. So absorbed was he in his own musings on death—on the verdict that he had already accepted—that he did not notice the beautiful web of logic and emotion that his passionate young lawyer was spinning around him. A protective web of perfectly honed arguments, designed to strike the chords of clemency and patriotism in the breasts of his would-be executioners.

“Citizens.” Jean-Luc’s face was flushed, his ponytail loose, as he strode across the courtroom, weaving his final arguments in André Valière’s defense. “This man before you, André Valière, was born in a château. When just a helpless babe in a cradle, he was given wealth more abundant than that which any one man deserves. For that, he ought to pay a price, even if he has renounced all of it and proven that he would give his very blood to save our Republic. He still owes this nation. On that score, I am in perfect agreement. But don’t you share my opinion that that price should directly benefit that same nation? Our beloved French Republic?