Lomaque nodded to two of them. "Picard and Magloire, go and sit
down at that desk. I shall want you after the rest are gone."
Saying this, Lomaque handed certain sealed and docketed papers to
the other men waiting in the room, who received them in silence,
bowed, and went out. Innocent spectators might have thought them
clerks taking bills of lading from a merchant. Who could have
imagined that the giving and receiving of Denunciations,
Arrest-orders, and Death-warrants--the providing of its doomed
human meal for the all-devouring guillotine--could have been
managed so coolly and quietly, with such unruffled calmness of
official routine?
"Now," said Lomaque, turning to the two men at the desk, as the
door closed, "have you got those notes about you?" (They answered
in the affirmative.) "Picard, you have the first particulars of
this affair of Trudaine; so you must begin reading. I have sent
in the reports; but we may as well go over the evidence again
from the commencement, to make sure that nothing has been left
out. If any corrections are to be made, now is the time to make
them. Read, Picard, and lose as little time as you possibly can."
Thus admonished, Picard drew some long slips of paper from his
pocket, and began reading from them as follows:
"Minutes of evidence collected concerning Louis Trudaine,
suspected, on the denunciation of Citizen Superintendent
Danville, of hostility to the sacred cause of liberty, and of
disaffection to the sovereignty of the people.
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