Petray smiled. He knew well enough he had a sick man to deal with, who was physically incapable of attacking him.
"Now you see how unjust it makes you, this misunderstanding. You shall know that the accused must have a counsel when he is confronted by the indictment. There are two of us, myself and the lieutenant, who have to take your case in hand; which do you prefer, him or me?"
"Neither," cried Ráby indignantly. "I am my own counsel, and I know how to defend myself, and do not need any of your help."
"My dear friend, be reasonable; see how unjust this is," said Petray in a wheedling voice. "You think I would defend you badly. But it is because I want to prevent you running your head against a wall that I am doing this. Listen, I'll read you the points of your defence."
And Petray proceeded to read the document in which he had set forth Ráby's case with such cunning adroitness, that black appeared white in his representations, and white wholly black. Such a web of sophistries, in fact, had he woven, that it had been difficult for a hearer to disentangle the truth. In it all the guilt was laid at the door of the dead "pope," and Ráby appeared as a too confiding victim of his wiles and misrepresentations. It was a tissue of false statements, yet Ráby listened to the end.
Then he said indignantly: "So you really believe I need all that for my justification, do you, that the guiltless are to be blamed and the criminal cleared, in order that the truth be made manifest; that I withdraw the impeachment already made against you, that I allow peaceable and harmless peasants to be attainted as rebels; that I disavow the responsibility of redressing their grievances, and that for this, a dead yet innocent man be blamed, and his memory be defamed. No such defence for me, thank you!"
"My good friend, you are an idealist and always will be. What does the 'pope's' reputation matter to you, since he is dead? Do you suppose he troubles as to what men say of him now? And as for the peasants, we can make short work of them by putting them in irons. The defence is perfectly in order; you only have to sign that you accept it."
"Let my hand wither in its chains first," cried the prisoner, "ere I subscribe to such infamy!" and he stretched his wasted hand to heaven.