The recreant was compelled to appear; but he appealed against the order, and denied the jurisdiction of the court; hence the cause was brought before the Parliament of Paris. Before this tribunal, then, were brought the wrongs of Renée Corbeau, and the whole affair seemed so cruel and odious to the judges--especially the fact of Pousset having taken holy orders (and thereby degraded them) to evade the contract of marriage--that they condemned him to espouse Renée or lose his head by the sword of the executioner.
He urged that the sanctity of holy orders utterly precluded the former reparation. On this the court unanimously declared that he must undergo the latter. He was accordingly replaced in the Bastile; the priest who was to attend in his last moments came to prepare him for death, and as all sentences were summarily executed in those days, already the headsman awaited him.
The heart of the poor girl, who loved him still, was now wrung with new anguish and pity, and she accused herself of being the cause of his approaching doom. Crushed by that dreadful conviction, in her anxiety to save him, or at least have his sentence mitigated in some manner, she conceived the idea of taking all the guilt of his position upon _herself_.
Hastening to the old Palais de Justice, she entered the great hall, the centre of which was then occupied by the famous marble table which Victor Hugo describes as being of a single piece, so long, and so broad and thick, that it was doubtful if in the world there was such another block of marble. Imploring the astonished judges to hear her, she knelt before them, and while scarcely daring to raise her eyes from the floor, she told them in trembling accents that in condemning her lover-husband, for such she deemed him, they had forgotten that she too was culpable; that by his death she would be sunk into sorrow and covered with ignominy; and that while seeking to avenge her, or repair her honour, they would bring upon her the opprobrium of all France!
The judges listened in bewildered silence, while in a low and still more tremulous voice, Renée continued thus:
"Messieurs--I will no longer conceal my crime. Remorse of conscience now forces me to declare that, thinking you might compel M. Pousset to marry me, I concealed the fact that I snared him into loving me--that I loved him first, and was thus the source of all my own sorrow! You deem it a crime that he took refuge in holy orders to avoid the fulfilment of his contract; yet, messieurs, that was not _his_ doing, but resulted from the will of a proud and avaricious father, who is, in that matter, the real criminal. Spare him then, I implore you--spare him to the world, if not to me! He has declared that his orders preclude his marrying me; and for that declaration you ordain that he must die. Oh, what matters his asserting that he would formally espouse me if he could; and because he cannot, you condemn him to die, after giving him _a choice_. Who here can doubt that he would marry me in spite of his deacon's orders? Though I am but a weak and foolish girl, I know that we may yet be wedded, could we but obtain the dispensation of his Holiness Clement VIII. Daily we expect in Paris his Legate, who possesses sovereign powers. At his feet I will solicit that dispensation; and oh, be assured, messieurs, that my love and my prayers will obtain it. Suspend your terrible sentence, then, till he arrives."