458 Les Miserables
district-attorney was speaking, the accused listened to him
open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which some
admiration was assuredly blended. He was evidently sur-
prised that a man could talk like that. From time to time, at
those ‘energetic’ moments of the prosecutor’s speech, when
eloquence which cannot contain itself overflows in a flood
of withering epithets and envelops the accused like a storm,
he moved his head slowly from right to left and from left to
right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with which
he had contented himself since the beginning of the argu-
ment. Two or three times the spectators who were nearest to
him heard him say in a low voice, ‘That is what comes of not
having asked M. Baloup.’ The district-attorney directed the
attention of the jury to this stupid attitude, evidently delib-
erate, which denoted not imbecility, but craft, skill, a habit
of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all its nakedness
the ‘profound perversity’ of this man. He ended by making
his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a
severe sentence.
At that time, as the reader will remember, it was penal
servitude for life.
The counsel for the defence rose, began by compliment-
ing Monsieur l’Avocat-General on his ‘admirable speech,’
then replied as best he could; but he weakened; the ground
was evidently slipping away from under his feet.