Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/164

 The Red Robe

(French dramatist, born 1858; author of a series of powerful dramas exposing the sources of corruption in French social, political and business life. The present play has for its theme the law as a snare for the feet of the poor and friendless. The principal character is a government prosecuting attorney, driven by professional ambition and jealousy, and the nagging of his wife and daughters. A murder has been committed, and the newspapers are scolding because the criminal has not been caught. Suspicion falls upon a poor wretch of a smuggler, who is hounded and bullied into incriminating himself. At the last moment, when the case is in the hands of the jury, the prosecuting attorney's conscience is troubled, and he realizes that he is sending an innocent man to the gallows)

could you have ignored them up to now?
 * —But—these circumstances, how

(his head bowed):—You think I have ignored them?—Would I dare to tell you all? I am not a bad man, you'd grant? I wouldn't desire that anyone should suffer through my fault. Well!—Oh! but how it shames me to confess it, to say it aloud, after having confessed it to myself! Well! When I studied this case, I had got it so fixed in my head, in advance, that this fellow Etchepare was a criminal, that when an argument in his favor presented itself to my mind, I kept it away from me, shrugging my shoulders. As to the facts about which I am telling you, and from which suddenly my doubt has been born—at first I sought only to prove to myself that these facts were false, taking, in the testimony of the witnesses, only what would combat their exactness, repelling all the rest, with a frightful naiveté in my bad faith.—And in the end, to dissipate my last scruples, I said to myself, like