"They're reciting lines from a theatre script," whispered Séchelles, shifting closer to André like a fellow actor before curtain call.
"Clowns performing a farce," André muttered back, eyes fixed ahead, disdain painted across his face.
When the judge finally passed the right of cross-examination to the defence, André rose and approached the witness stand, observing the bulky figure of Fide with great interest, like a doctor studying an uncertain diagnosis. The cook squirmed under the scrutiny, visibly uncomfortable, glancing left and right as if sensing he'd slipped somehow.
"Maître Franck," came the judge's impatient voice, "please proceed with your questions. If you have none, return to your seat."
One minute of silent pressure was enough. André smiled faintly and began.
"Monsieur Fide, you've testified that you were injured on the night of the incident—February 13th, correct?"
"Yes, monsieur!" the witness replied.
"A most unfortunate event."
"Indeed, monsieur!"
"And your right arm and ribs were both broken in the attack?"
"Yes, monsieur!"
A stir came from the back of the courtroom. Someone stood. André gestured toward them and said:
"My apologies, monsieur Fide. It appears some of our guests in the rear rows didn't hear your response clearly. For the sake of legal transparency and the sacred principle of fairness, would you kindly take a deep breath and answer again in the loudest voice you can manage?"
Without hesitation, Fide complied, practically shouting the words: "Yes, monsieur!"
A few physicians in the gallery exchanged raised eyebrows and hushed whispers.
André raised his own brow in mock surprise.
"That's curious. You say your arm is still healing, but your ribs—delicate as they are—have fully recovered in just sixty days? Enough that you can inhale deeply and shout without pain?"
Fide froze.
The words had logic—worse, they sounded like truth. He said nothing. Then, deciding silence was safest, he simply shut his mouth and refused to speak another word.
Unbothered, André turned to his assistant and accepted a document from Séchelles. He passed it to the chief clerk, who in turn handed it to the judge.
Facing the audience, André announced:
"This document is a statement from the Paris Medical Association. It notes that, under similar circumstances, rib injuries are typically more severe than those of the arm, and require far longer to heal—five to six months, in most cases. Such injuries often render deep breathing painful, and loud speech nearly impossible.
If Monsieur Fide is not lying... then he must be inhuman."
The gallery exploded in gasps and jeers.
André pivoted sharply and stepped closer to the witness box. Fide, seeing the lawyer advance again, began groaning theatrically—first claiming his ribs hurt, then his arm, then his entire body. Eventually he collapsed into exaggerated silence.
The performance was laughable. And the courtroom laughed. Joy returned to the air like spring after frost.
Judge Faria promptly dismissed the witness. And to the jury, he said carefully:
"Given certain irregularities, the jury may treat the testimony of Monsieur Fide with appropriate caution."
The chamber rang with boos.
André was not disappointed. This had been the plan all along. He had never trusted this court, its judge, its prosecutor, nor its twelve jurors. His true audience was the five hundred people packed into the gallery—many of them magistrates, officials, and National Assembly delegates.
As for the "medical statement"—it was a forgery, or half of one. Purchased for 500 livres from the chairman of the Medical Society, its contents were a clever mix of truth and fiction—nine truths to wrap a single lie, impossible to disentangle. Even if the judge discarded it, it had already served its purpose: to cast doubt.
At the back of the courtroom, Hoche handed a bundle of notes to Meldar—copies of the stenographic record, transcribed on the fly by twenty reporters.
Meldar bolted for the door. The bailiff not only let him pass but held the door open. Within two hours, those notes would be printed across every street corner in Paris.
Before the second witness could take the stand, Judge Faria announced a fifteen-minute recess—time, he said, to personally review the next witness's credibility and avoid another public humiliation.
"Are you certain there won't be another blunder, Monsieur Pratty?" the judge thundered once inside his chambers, slamming a hand on the desk.
"My lord, I swear to God—no, I guarantee it!"
"Good. Because if there is, I expect you to be the first to request dismissal."
Faria had had enough. He was tired of being made a fool in public. In truth, he regretted ever accepting the tax farmers' bribe. Now he was quietly preparing to abandon ship. In two weeks, he would be working in the same court as André—the new tax prosecutor, a man with powerful allies and rising influence. Faria had no desire to begin that relationship on bad terms.
The fifteen-minute recess passed swiftly. As the courtroom returned to order, the second prosecution witness stepped up.
At first glance, he seemed a gentleman—past forty, dressed in refined provincial style, his powdered wig carefully arranged. Polite, composed, his manner impeccable as he held the Declaration of the Rights of Man and took the oath.
"Trouble ahead," Billaud-Varenne murmured to Prieur. Even Robespierre, watching from his shadowed corner, felt a flicker of concern.
Two minutes into questioning, the man—Madin by name—began his testimony.
"Yes, Monsieur le Procureur," he declared. "I am absolutely certain that the man in the dock—Citizen Babeuf—was the ringleader. It was he who gave the order to hang poor Monsieur Plan from the tree that night... February 13th."
André saw the fear in Madin's eyes—the kind of fear not of guilt, but of memory. Of something too vividly remembered. He glanced at Babeuf in the dock. The accused wouldn't meet Madin's gaze.
"Maître Franck, he's probably telling the truth," Séchelles whispered.
André said nothing, but his silence confirmed agreement. There were no obvious flaws in Madin's account. The man's recollection was too sharp, too precise. Even André—twice a lawyer in two lives—could find no cracks to exploit.
Still, when his turn came, he stood and approached the witness box with the same calm deliberation as before.
"Monsieur Madin, may I ask: how is your vision? I mean, how far can you see clearly?"
"From here"—he pointed—"to the farthest row in the gallery. Without doubt."
"You're certain?"
"Absolutely."
André nodded. Then turned to the judge.
"Your Honour, I request to conduct a brief experiment to test the witness's eyesight."
"I object!" Pratty leapt up. "This is a stalling tactic, nothing more!"
"It'll take ten minutes—fifteen at most," André promised.
The judge hesitated, then said:
"Very well, Maître Franck. But you have five minutes."
André turned to the doors and raised a hand. Hoche, dressed plainly, stood up at the back.
"Monsieur Madin, can you see the young man standing at the entrance?"
"Perfectly."
"And what is he holding in his left hand?"
"A roll of newspapers."
"Thank you."
André turned again, this time to the gallery.
"Legendre," he said quietly.
At once, Legendre and others moved to the curtains, drawing all six shut. Darkness fell like a dropped veil. The courtroom became pitch black—thick, suffocating night.
"Monsieur Madin," André said. "Can you still see the young man?"
The witness hesitated.
"Not clearly."
"I didn't ask if you saw him clearly. I asked whether you could see him at all."
"No... I cannot."
"You're certain?"
"I am. A gentleman does not lie."
"Thank you. Raise the curtains."
Light returned. André faced the witness once more.
"You previously testified that at around 1:10 to 1:25 a.m. on February 13th, you were hiding in a thicket some five yards from the crime scene, and from there, you saw my client order the killing of Captain Plan?"
"I stand by that statement," Madin said.
André frowned. He spoke slowly, carefully.
"Monsieur Madin, I can tell you with certainty that the distance from this witness stand to the far end of the gallery is less than thirty-two yards. And yet you say that—at over thirty-five yards—you could see clearly enough to identify a man, at night... in February."
"Not unusual," the witness replied smoothly. "There was moonlight that night—bright as snow. I saw it all."
André was not surprised.
"Oh? You're certain it was moonlight? Not torchlight, candlelight, or fireflies?"
"No, monsieur. Moonlight."
He fell silent for a beat, long enough to make both judge and prosecutor fidget. Then he took another document from Séchelles and handed it to the clerk.
"This is an extract from the latest ephemeris compiled by the Paris Observatory. According to their records, during the second week of February 1790, the skies over Saint-Quentin in Picardy—where the incident occurred—were obscured by thick cloud cover, rendering the moon invisible."
Before he could continue, Madin stood and shouted:
"No! That's impossible! There was moonlight that night—I swear it! I saw the murderer with my own eyes! I swear it by God!"
André leaned against the rail, calm as a tide coming in.
"Forgive me," he said quietly, "but you've already sworn—by my God. By the law."
The prosecutor's assistant, sharp-eyed, seized on a possible loophole.
"Your Honour," he called. "Maître Franck said the observatory recorded most nights as cloudy—not all."
André turned, smiling. He gave a thumbs-up.
"Indeed! I noticed that too. So I searched further. A helpful student from Lycée Saint-Louis assisted me."
He presented a third document to the judge.
"This confirms that between 1:00 and 1:25 a.m. on February 13th, the skies over Saint-Quentin were completely overcast. There was no moonlight.
And this conclusion—" André paused, letting it settle—"was signed by none other than the Mayor of Paris, the celebrated astronomer, Citizen Jean-Sylvain Bailly."
Silence fell like thunder.
The courtroom was stunned.
Surely Bailly—mayor, academic, astronomer—would not make such a claim lightly. He had no stake in this trial. Which meant: Madin had lied. Just like Fide before him.
"Liar!"
"Charlatan!"
The gallery rose in outrage, fists in the air, voices unified in condemnation. The once-composed gentleman at the witness stand was paralyzed with fear.
André exhaled quietly. He believed Madin's story, in truth. The man had probably spoken sincerely. But Bailly's document—based on a falsified astronomical chart—was damning. And Bailly, now a politician, could not afford to admit error.
After all, André had paid dearly for that deception—2,000 livres to secure altered records from the Observatory, orchestrated through Laclos. The truth had been buried beneath precision and prestige.
And besides—André mused—who among the public remembered the clouds on a February night two months ago?
No one.
Outside the court, the news spread like wildfire. Paris erupted. People shouted, marched, chanted—calling for justice, calling for truth. For Babeuf.
Back inside, Judge Faria, pale and sweating, had seen enough.
"I declare a recess of sixty minutes," he announced, "so the court may verify the evidence submitted by the defense."
He didn't need an hour. Within thirty minutes, the Hôtel de Ville delivered confirmation: Mayor Bailly had signed the document, attesting its authenticity.
What followed was swift and rehearsed.
Behind closed doors, in the judge's chambers, Pratty and André reached a quiet agreement.
The prosecution withdrew all charges against Babeuf. They issued a formal apology for the accusations. The state would pay 100 livres in compensation. The two false witnesses—Fide and Madin—would be tried separately in Saint-Quentin, where the usual penalty was a small fine.
When the judge announced the verdict—not guilty—the courtroom erupted in cheers. Outside, the crowd lifted Babeuf onto their shoulders and carried him out like a war hero, through the gates, into the streets, into the roar of justice.
But André did not smile.
He slipped away from the celebration, stepped aside from the reaching hands and shouted praise, and made for a quiet stairwell alone.
"Looking for redemption?" Séchelles asked, appearing beside him like a shadow.
"My conscience is intact," André replied, not turning back.
"You destroyed a man's honour," Séchelles pressed. "A gentleman's pride."
André's voice was calm.
"A courtroom is a battlefield. And war is war. There is no surrender. No retreat."
He began to descend.
"Oh—by the way," Séchelles called after him, "Babeuf wants to thank you in person."
André did not stop.
"The contract is fulfilled," he said. "Wish him luck. He'll need it."