this law before which the moral sense of the community recoils with ever-increasing misgiving this law is the death penalty. Gentlemen, it is this law which is to-day the cause of this suit; it is our adversary. I am sorry for the attorneygeneral, but I see it behind him. Very well then, I will admit that for twenty years I have believed, as I have stated in pages that I could read to you, I have believed with M. Léon Fancher, who in 1836 wrote in an article in the "Revue de Paris" thus: "The scaffold no longer appears upon our public squares save at rare intervals, and as a spectacle that justice has shame in giving.” I believed, I say, that the guillotine, since one must call it by name, began to understand itself, that it felt itself rebuked and made its decision to abandon the full glare of the Place de Grève with its crowds to be no longer cried in the streets and announced as a spectacle. It began to carry on its operations in the most inconspicuous way possible in the obscurity of the Barrière Saint Jacques, in a deserted spot and without spectators. Apparently it began to hide its head, and I congratulated it on this modesty. Well, gentlemen! I deceived myself, M. Léon Fancher deceived himself. The guillotine has recovered from its false shame. It considers itself, in the parlance of the day, a social institution; and who knows, perhaps, even it dreams of its restoration. The Barrière Saint Jacques marks its decadence. Perhaps some day we shall see it reappear in the Place de Grève at noonday in presence of the multitude, with its train of executioners, of armed police, of public criers, even under the windows of the Hotel de Ville, from whose heights it was one day, the 24th of February, denounced and disfigured. Meantime it rears itself again. It feels it necessary that society now so unsettled, in order to become re-established, should return, as is still said, to all its ancient traditions, and it is an ancient tradition. It protests against those bombastie demagogues, called Beccaria, Vico, Filangieri, Montesquieu, Turgot, Franklin, called Louis Philippe, called Broglie and Guizot, who dare believe and say that a machine for the cutting off of heads is not needed in a community which has the Gospel for its guide. Its indignation is roused against these utopian anarchists! and on the morrow of its days the most glaring and the most sanguinary, it desires to be admired! It insists that respect be rendered it, else it declares itself insulted, it brings suit and demands damages! It has had the blood, but that is not enough, it is not content, it desires also fine and imprisonment. Gentlemen of the jury, the day when this official paper was brought to my house for my son, the warrant for this unjustifiable suit-we see strange things in these days and ought to become accustomed to them-well, I avow it, I was stupefied; I said to myself, What! Have we come to that? Is it possible that by force of repeated encroachments upon good sense, upon reason, upon freedom of thought, upon natural rights we have come to that, where not the material respect is demanded of us,—that is not denied, we accord it,—but the moral respect for those penal laws that affright the conscience, that cause whoever thinks of them to grow pale, that religion has in abhorrence, that dare to be without repeal, knowing that they can be blind; for those laws that dip the finger in human blood to write the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," for those impious laws that make one lose one's faith in humanity when they strike the culpable, and that cause one to doubt God when they smite the innocent. No, no, no, we have not come to that,-No! Since, and for the reason that I am involved, it is well to tell you, gentlemen of the jury, and you will understand how profound must be my emotion, that the real culprit in this affair, if culprit there be, is not my son, it is I! The person really guilty, I insist, is myself. I who for twenty-five years have combatted with all my force laws from which there was no appeal! I who for twenty-five years have defended on every occasion the sanctity of human life, and this crime I, long before and more often than my son, have committed. I denounce myself! I have committed this crime with every aggravating circumstance, with premeditation, with pertinacity, and without its being a first offence. Yes, I declare it, this old and unwise law of retaliation, this law which requires blood for blood, I have combatted it all my life-all my life, gentlemen of the jury, and a long as I have breath I will combat it, with all my efforts as writer I will combat it and with all my acts and all my votes as legislator; I declare it [here M. Hugo extended his arm toward the crucifix at the end of the hall over the judge's seat] before that victim of the death penalty who is there, who sees us and who hears us! I swear it before that cross where, two thousand years ago, as an everlasting testimony for generations to come, human law nailed the Law Divine. That which my son has written he has written, I repeat, because it is I who have animated him from his childhood, because he is not only my son according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, because he desires to perpetuate the opinion of his father. Perpetuate the opinion of his father! Truly a strange crime and for which I marvel that one should be prosecuted! It was reserved for these unique upholders of the family to show us this novelty. Gentlemen, I admit that the accusation before us astounds |