CHAPTER CXI
EXPIATION
OTWITHSTANDING the density of the crowd, Villefort saw it open before him. There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions, that, even in the worst times, the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathize with the sufferer in a great catastrophe. Many people have been assassinated in a tumult; but even criminals have rarely been insulted during their trial. Thus Villefort passed through the mass of spectators, guards and officers of the Palais, and withdrew. Though he had acknowledged his guilt, he was protected by his grief. There are some situations which men understand by instinct, though their reason cannot explain them; in such cases the greatest poet is he who utters the loudest and most natural cry. This cry the crowd takes for the whole story, and it is right to do so, and still more right to regard it as sublime when it is true.
It would be difficult to describe the state of stupor in which Villefort left the Palais. Every pulse beat with feverish excitement, every nerve was strained, every vein swollen, and every part of his body seemed to be dissected into millions of agonies. Habit alone guided him through the passage; he threw aside his magisterial robe, not with any idea of what was befitting, but he could not bear the weight on his shoulders. It was a robe of Nessus pregnant with torture. Having staggered as far as the Rue Dauphine, he perceived his carriage, awoke his sleeping coachman by opening the door himself, threw himself on the cushions, and pointed toward the Faubourg Saint-Honoré; the carriage drove on.
All the weight of his fallen fortune seemed suddenly to crush him; he could not foresee the consequences; he could not contemplate the future with the indifference of a cold murderer.
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