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Though in small matters that touched his personal comfort he was arrogantly irritable, under the cross-examination that assailed his commercial methods he proved suave and non-committal. As the day passed, the prosecutor's insinuations grew more open and vindictive.
Everyone assumed that Oscar Wilde was guilty of the worst that had ever been alleged against him; the very people who received him in their houses condemned him pitilessly and, as I approached the fountain-head of information, the charges became more and more definite; to my horror, in the Public Prosecutor's office, his guilt was said to be known and classified.
As Ollie had been thoughtless of Isom, so she might be thoughtless of him, and see in him only a foolish, weak instrument to use to her own advantage. Why should he seal his lips for Ollie, go to the gallows for her, perhaps, and leave the blight of that shameful end upon his name forever? He looked up. His mind had made that swift summing up while the prosecutor's words were echoing in the room.
If the prisoner at the bar had not himself taken it out of the prosecutor's strong-box, who had? Such was the form in which the case was left for the jury. "It's UP," whispered Mr. Weasel behind his hand to Mr. Balais. Mr. Balais nodded indifferently; the case was over so far as he was concerned, and he was not going to employ significant action gratuitously.
He saw Darcy frequently at the jail, and to that young man's pleadings that something be done, always returned the answer: "Don't worry! It will come out all right!" "But Amy and the disgrace?" "She doesn't consider herself disgraced, and you shouldn't. The best of police headquarters or prosecutor's detectives make mistakes. I'm going to rectify them. But it will take time."
He behaved himself gravely when at public prayers at the chapel, and applied himself with great diligence to praying and singing of Psalms when in his cell; but as to the particular crime of which he was convicted, that he absolutely denied from first to last, with the strongest asseverations that not one word of all the prosecutor's evidence was true, and indeed there has since appeared great likelihood that he spoke nothing but the truth.
Up to this time no one had appeared for the accused, nor had any objection been made to any part of the testimony except by the Judge. Neither had any one of the prosecutor's witnesses been asked a single question in rebuttal. With the resting of the Government's case a dead silence fell upon the room.
"Who was the man that just left your room?" asked one of the judges who entered the prosecutor's cabinet after Nekhludoff had left. "Nekhludoff. You know, the one who made such strange suggestions in the Krasnopersk town council. Just imagine, he is on the jury, and among the prisoners there was a woman, or girl, who was sentenced to penal servitude, and who, he says, was deceived by him.
M. Milaud is definitely appointed to Nevers, Petit-Claud will sell his practice, you will have no difficulty in obtaining a deputy public prosecutor's place for him; and it will not be long before he becomes attorney for the crown, president of the court, deputy, what you will." Francis went back to the dining-room and behaved charmingly to his daughter's suitor.
There's the whole of the detective office, there's the public prosecutor's staff, there's the examining magistrate, the press and, above all, public opinion, which has to be satisfied and which calls for and expects a culprit. That culprit is yourself or Florence Levasseur. Or, rather, it's you and Florence Levasseur." Don Luis did not move a muscle of his face. Mazeroux waited a moment longer.
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