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 abandoned by a man for whom she had sacrificed all. But her attachment to me rendered her testimony suspected, and it was believed that she only spoke thus to save me.

My counsel had terminated this narrative at least a quarter of an hour, and I was still listening like a man oppressed with the night-mare. At the age of twenty I was suffering under the weight of the twofold accusation of forging and assassination, without having even dreamt of committing such crimes. I even reflected whether I would not hang myself at the bars of my cell with a straw rope. I was losing my senses, but at last collected myself sufficiently to detail all the facts requisite for my exculpation. In the after-examination they insisted strongly on the blood which the porter, who had carried my luggage, stated he had seen on my hands. This blood had flowed from a cut inflicted by the glass of a window which I had broken to remove the shutter, and I could produce two witnesses of this fact. My counsel, to whom I told all my grounds of defence, assured me, that united with the testimony of Francine, which alone had been of no avail, I should be acquitted, which was the case a few days afterwards. Francine, although still very weak, came immediately to see me, and confirmed all the particulars which the examination had first acquainted me with.

I was thus relieved of an enormous weight, without being yet entirely freed from uneasiness: my repeated escapes had delayed the decision of the accusation of forgery, in which I had been implicated, and nothing indicated its termination, for Grouard had also escaped. The result of the charge from which I had just been freed, had, however, given me a hope, and I thought nothing of attempting to escape, when an opportunity presented, which I seized, as it were, by instinct. In the chamber in which I was placed, were the temporary prisoners, and on fetching away two of them one morning, the jailor forgot to close the door,