Thérèse is convicted on perjured testimony and sent to Paris

Thérèse is convicted on perjured testimony and sent from Lyon to Paris after Judge Cardoville turns fabricated accusations into a confession and a hostile hearing into a sentence. The episode makes legal procedure the latest instrument of her persecution: the powerless prisoner cannot make her account count, while powerful men convert their own crimes into evidence against her. On the journey, Thérèse recounts this pattern to Madame de Lorsange and Monsieur de Corville; the testimony leads to the discovery that she is Justine, Madame de Lorsange’s sister, and prompts Monsieur de Corville to take responsibility for her case.

The prosecution in Lyon

The conviction follows the fire at the Villefranche inn, where Madame Bertrand accused Thérèse of theft and arson. When the officer examined the circumstances, Thérèse explained that she had entered the hayloft while looking for a place to relieve herself. The detail supplied a plausible reason for her presence, but also furnished the authorities with what they treated as proof. Her offer to be searched for the allegedly stolen money was dismissed: the officials asserted, without establishing it, that she must have handed the money to accomplices. Dubois then invoked the brand Rodin had burned on Thérèse’s body in an earlier episode, turning a mark of past victimization into apparent evidence of criminal character. Thérèse acknowledged the mark and its history rather than allowing Dubois to wield that knowledge as a concealed trap, but the officer treated the brand and her words as condemnation.

The subsequent questioning was conducted by Cardoville, who had already abused Thérèse and now appeared in the authority of a judge. He asked whether she knew Saint-Florent, then presented the man’s allegations as established fact. Saint-Florent claimed that Thérèse had joined a band of thieves, stolen his money and pocketbook, and urged the group to kill him; he further alleged that, years later, she stole a watch and one hundred louis from him during a visit to his home. Thérèse recognized Saint-Florent but the evidence does not establish the accusations as true. Cardoville nevertheless used her distress at hearing them to instruct the clerk to record her silence and expressions as an acknowledgment of guilt, converting a response to calumny into a purported confession.

From interrogation to transfer

Thérèse protested that Cardoville was abusing his office and appealed to divine justice, but he ended the questioning by declaring the dossier complete and saying she had confessed to all the crimes. He ordered her removed, describing her as too unsettled by despair and remorse to continue. The language assigned her guilt before a verdict, while her visible anguish became part of the case against her. The court proceeded quickly; Thérèse describes the prosecution as driven by hatred, vengeance, and lust, and says she was condemned and dispatched to Paris for confirmation of the sentence.

The transfer does not immediately provide a hearing in which Thérèse can clear her name. She travels as a convicted criminal despite denying guilt, and the sentence places her in danger of execution. At the time of her arrest, officials had already said that a prisoner tried in Lyon would be taken to Paris for confirmation and then returned to Lyon to be executed. The journey therefore carries a specific institutional threat: the condemnation is moving toward ratification, not toward a neutral reconsideration.

Thérèse’s account of repeated injustice

On the journey, Thérèse interprets the case through the sequence of earlier encounters that have brought her to this point. As a child in Paris, she refused a wealthy usurer’s proposal that she commit theft; he later framed her for stealing a diamond, which was found in her mattress, and her account of his attempt to involve her in crime was dismissed. At the Conciergerie, she faced execution until Dubois arranged a prison fire and escape. In another episode, Thérèse refused to poison the Marquise de Bressac; the Marquise tested the poison on a dog and sent for help, but she died, and the Count blamed Thérèse while keeping her earned wages and the money she had left behind. His reply to her request denied her legitimate claim and threatened her messenger with arrest.

The catalogue continues beyond these episodes. Thérèse recalls being branded by Rodin after trying to prevent a crime, and later seeking to protect Madame de Gernande from her husband, who threatened to drain her blood. She also recalls helping an injured man who repaid her by forcing her to work for him and leaving her in danger, and losing her small savings while preventing another woman from being robbed. Each instance reverses the expected relation between conduct and consequence: a refusal to commit a crime brings prosecution, assistance invites exploitation, and those who harm her retain or gain good fortune. In the present trial, the same reversal reaches its sharpest form when a judge implicated in her suffering uses Saint-Florent’s testimony to send her toward death.

Testimony, recognition, and intervention

The episode belongs to the novel’s framed testimony rather than to an impersonal account of the trial. Guards escort Thérèse from Lyon toward Paris, and at Montargis Madame de Lorsange and Monsieur de Corville ask what she has done. Told that she faces accusations of murder, theft, and arson, with a sentence destined for confirmation in Paris, they arrange to hear her story. Monsieur de Corville assumes responsibility for her, and she is unbound and given food before she begins her account. Her narration makes the Lyon judgment part of a longer history offered to listeners whose response can affect her fate.

Thérèse initially withholds her name and birth, explaining that her origins did not destine her for her present humiliation. As her account ends, Madame de Lorsange recognizes in the prisoner her long-lost sister, Justine. The revelation turns the testimony from a history heard at a roadside inn into a family disclosure with immediate consequences. Monsieur de Corville, moved by the account and conscious of the case’s significance, writes to the Lord Chancellor, guarantees Thérèse’s innocence under oath, and asks that she be held at his château until the matter is clarified. He assumes responsibility for her before the guards and takes her into his protection.

Aftermath and significance

Monsieur de Corville’s intervention creates a route away from the sentence, but the eventual royal reversal does not amount to equal justice for all involved. Letters from the King nullify the proceedings against Thérèse, restore her standing as an honest citizen, silence the tribunals that had defamed her, and grant her an annual pension of one thousand crowns. The money comes from gold seized at the counterfeiters’ workshop in Dauphiné. Yet Cardoville has been appointed to a provincial administration and Saint-Florent to oversee colonial trade before their crimes become public; their powerful families quiet the resulting scandal, and their misconduct is soon forgotten. Thérèse is cleared and compensated, but the men whose testimony and authority helped condemn her escape comparable accountability.

The contrast defines the episode’s force. Thérèse’s account is a plea for credibility, but its effects depend on listeners with the influence to make it legible to the state: Madame de Lorsange recognizes the speaker, and Monsieur de Corville can address the Lord Chancellor and secure her custody. In Lyon, her own words had been recast as proof of guilt; at Montargis, being heard by sympathetic and powerful witnesses opens a path to exoneration. The reversal exposes not simply a mistaken verdict but a system in which evidence, testimony, and legal protection carry different weight according to the speaker’s position.