back between her guards, and once more endeavoured to conceal herself, he extended his arm towards her, and, with outstretched finger, directed the attention of the court to the quailing form of the accused amid a silence so deep that it could almost be heard, and which he ultimately terminated by these extraordinary words:"You see that woman, gentlemen of the jury, who has just so vehemently declared her innocence; and now I, in my turn, tell you that I entertain no doubt of her guilt; and that I, moreover, believe her to be capable of anything."

Be it remembered that this declaration on the part of the presiding officer of the courtof the man who sat beneath the awful effigy of a crucified Saviour-and to whom had been delegated the supreme duty of administering even-handed justice alike to the accused and to society, did not even await the evidence of the witnesses whose revelations were to decide a question of life and death-but that he volunteered this frightful assertion before any distinct proof of the guilt of the prisoner had been adduced; nor should the fact be overlooked that the jury, which was composed of small farmers and petty tradesmen, regarded with awe and reverence the solemn and stately personage who had arrived from the capital expressly to preside over the tribunal of their remote province, and that they were consequently prepared to consider his opinion as infallible.

I watched the countenances of those who were nearest to me, and I at once perceived that the cruel words of the President had not failed in their effect; nor was it, indeed, possible that such a declaration, pronounced, moreover, with an emphasis which appeared to insure the perfect conviction of the speaker, could do otherwise than impress every one who heard it; and it was amid the sensation produced by this startling incident that the first witness was called and sworn.

This witness was the aunt; and, if my preconceived notions of a criminal trial had already been shaken, I became still more bewildered and surprised as the proceedings progressed. Instead, as is the case in our own courts of law, of rejecting all merely hearsay evidence, the old woman was urged, alternately by the President and the Procureur, to detail all the reports consequent upon the fire; and to repeat what Jean-Marie So-and-so had said relatively to the prisoner to Dominique, or Joseph, or Jules; while the bitter volubility of the vindictive witness, whose occasional glances of hatred towards the accused sufficiently testified to the feeling by which she was actuated, ably seconded their efforts; and throughout a

whole half-hour she poured forth, in the most gutteral patois, a tide of village gossip and scandal, all of which tended to cast suspicion upon the prisoner. Two leading facts were, however, elicited from her evidence, which threw considerable doubt upon her statements. The farm at which the fire had occurred was the joint property of her brother and herself; and she had been careful to insure her own portion of the estate against the very calamity which had taken place; nor had she failed, within twenty-four hours of the event, to claim the amount due to her, after having solemnly sworn that she believed the fire to have been purely accidental. She, moreover, admitted, that she had not accused the prisoner of the crime of arson until the money had been paid over to her; while the cross-questioning of the prisoner's counsel soon enabled him to prove that, subsequently to her having done so, on being informed that should her step-niece be found guilty of arson, she would be called upon to refund the insurance money, she had endeavoured to recal her accusation, and to persuade her neighbours that they had misunderstood her meaning. It was, however, too late; her extreme loquacity had rung an alarum throughout the village-the ignorant are always greedy of the marvellous-and her disclaimers were universally disregarded. All the inhabitants of the hamlet at once decided that Rosalie was the incendiary; and, with a pertinacity which almost drove the aunt to desperation, quoted her own declarations as evidence of the fact. Thus taken in her own toils, the heartless old woman, instead of acknowledging that she had no authority for the rumours which she had spread, but had been instigated to this act of cruel injustice by her hatred and jealousy of her step-niece, vehemently declared that, since such was the case, if she were compelled to refund the money, she would at least have the life of the prisoner as some compensation for the loss.

When accused by the counsel of having made use of this threat, her denial was faint and sullen, and finally terminated by the fiendish remark, that, if she had ever said so, she was prepared to abide by it; that she maintained the guilt of the prisoner; and that they should do better, even if they lost the money, so that they were rid of her nephew's wife along with it.

As these malignant words passed her lips a low murmur filled the court, and the President ordered her to stand down. Half-a-dozen other witnesses were then successively called on the same side, and in every case were asked whe

ther they were relatives, friends, or lovers of the prisoner? to which question two sturdy young peasants answered bitterly, "No, thank God!" and in both instances it was elicited by her counsel that they were discarded suitors, who had, since her marriage, caused frequent misunderstandings between herself and her husband.

Still, hour after hour, the tide of words flowed on, and no one proof of guilt had been brought against the prisoner. At intervals, some leading question, well calculated to cause her to criminate herself, was abruptly put by the President, and at each denial she was desired to remember that she had confessed as much during her previous examination; but, agitated as she was, she still retained sufficient self-possession to refute the assertion, declaring that she never could have accused herself of a crime of which she was innocent.

As the next name was called, and one of the ushers of the court was about to introduce a new witness, a faint scream burst from the lips of the prisoner, which was succeeded by a violent fit of weeping; and I grew sick at heart, lest she was at last to find herself in contact with an accuser whose charge she could not refute. A slight confusion at the extremity of the hall, a low murmur, and the dragging of heavy steps along the floor, at that moment diverted my attention from the wretched woman; and I I saw, slowly approaching the witness chair, an infirm and aged man, supported by two of the subordinate officers of the court. As he was led forward, he looked helplessly from side to side, as if bewildered by the novelty of the scene about him; and, after having been assisted up the steps of the dais, he dropped into the chair to which he was conducted, nor did he attempt to rise when told by the President to stand up while he took the customary oath.

"Stand up:❞ repeated the usher; but the old man continued motionless.

"He can't hear;" shouted the harsh voice of his sister from the extremity of the court; "he's been deaf this many a year; you must shout into his ear." The usher acted upon this suggestion; but the poor old man only shook his grey head, and laughed.

"Does he know why he is here?” asked the President impatiently.

"Not he:" replied the same voluntary spokeswoman; "we did'nt tell him, or he would'nt have come."

"Can he be made to understand the nature of an oath ?"

"May-be yes, may-be no; he's childish like; but you can try him."

"This is trifling with the court!" exclaimed the President angrily; "and cruel to this poor old man. Who is he?"

"Her husband's father, my brother; the father-in-law that she tried to burn out," responded the woman.

"Silence!" shouted the President. "Usher, remove this man from the court, and see that he is taken care of until he can be conveyed to his home."

He was obeyed; the old man was with difficulty induced to leave his seat, and many a tear followed him as he disappeared. It was a most painful spectacle, nor was it the only one which we were destined to witness; for, before the examination was resumed, an individual approached the bench, and whispered a few words to the President, who, with an irritated gesture, impatiently replied, "Well, if it must be so; but we are losing time."

The messenger made a sign, and he had no sooner done so than a woman appeared at a side door, carrying an infant in her arms, with which she approached the prisoner, who eagerly leant forward to receive it. The child sprang, with a joyful cry of recognition, into the embrace of its wretched mother, who for a moment strained it convulsively to her bosom; but when she endeavoured to give it the nourishment which it required, the infant flung itself violently back, terrified by the feverish contact, and could not be induced again to approach her. Never shall I forget the agony depicted upon the countenance of the unhappy prisoner: her tears seemed to have been suddenly dried up; and, rising from her seat, she gave back the struggling infant into the arms of its nurse, without a word. Had she been the veriest criminal on earth, she was an object of intense pity at that moment!

The proceedings were once more resumed. Other witnesses for the prosecution followed, but the evidence was still vague and inconclusive; and at length the Procureur rose to address the court. His speech was eloquent and emphatic; but, although he cleverly availed himself of every opportunity of bringing the guilt of both charges home to the prisoner, he was rather startling than convincing in his arguments. He repeatedly called upon her to deny the truth of his conclusions, but he gave her no opportunity of doing so; he hurled at her the most bitter invectives, applied to her the most opprobrious epithets, and defied her to summon a single witness to prove her innocence, or to save her from an ignominious death; and, finally, he reproached her with her ingratitude to a family by whose

generosity she had been raised from poverty to comfort; reminded her of the disgrace which she had brought, not only upon the wretched old man of eighty-six years of age, who had been made through her means a public spectacle, but also upon the helpless children to whom she had given birth, and especially upon the innocent and ill-fated infant who had first seen the light through the iron bars of a prison.

It was a frightful piece of elocution; never for an instant did he appear to remember that the wretched prisoner might yet, despite appearances, have been wrongfully accused, and have been a victim rather than a criminal. There was no leaning to the side of mercy, no relenting, no gleam of light thrown upon the darkness of the picture; and it was evident that the miserable woman felt she was lost long before his terrible words ceased to vibrate in her ears. For a time she had sat motionless, gazing upon him with a wild stare of affrighted wonder; but as he rapidly heaped circumstance upon circumstance, recapitulated the gossip of the villagers, and deduced from the most apparently unimportant facts the most condemnatory conclusions, she gradually sank lower and lower upon her seat, until she appeared no longer able to sustain herself; and, when a deep and thrilling silence succeeded to the speech of the public accuser, her choking sobs were distinctly audible.

The Procureur was right: the witnesses for the defence were unable to prove her innocence of the crime imputed to her; but they one and all bore evidence to the irreproachability of her character; to her piety, her industry, her neighbourly helpfulness, and her charity, both of word and deed. They showed, moreover, that she had borne with patience and submission the tyranny of her husband's aunt, the violence of that husband himself, and that she had been to her father-in-law a devoted and affectionate daughter.

"But," said the Procureur to one of her panegyrists, "if the accused were indeed the admirable person whom you describe, how do you account for her having made so many enemies, and for the general belief in her guilt prevalent throughout the village?"

"Ha, monsieur!" replied the brave young peasant, as he turned a hasty and sympathizing glance towards the prisoner; "hate grows faster than love, and lasts longer. Before the neighbours dreamt of Rosalie's good luck-or, rather, bad luck, as it has since turned out, poor woman!-there was many a lad in the village that hoped to make her his wife; but she listened to none of them, and they

can't forgive her for having married above them."

"And you, not having been of the number, can afford to say a good word for her. Is that what we are to understand?" asked the Procureur, sarcastically.

"No, monsieur;" was the sturdy reply; "but I loved her too well to bear malice."

A gleam of light at last! But, alas! too faint to penetrate the gloom of her prison cell.

"Stand down," said the President; and the heroic young man obeyed. And this was heroism; for he had boldly avowed his affection for one who had appeared to be abandoned by every other human being-her adopted father had abandoned her in the unconsciousness of second childhood-her infant, in the terror of helplessness her friends, from the dread of shame she stood alone, until that humble but upright man braved the world's withering scorn, and dared the contemptuous laughter of his fellows to silence one throb of her bursting heart.

The last witness had been heard, and the counsel rose for the defence. He no doubt felt that he had undertaken not only a difficult, but an onerous task, for at the commencement of his speech he was visibly agitated: he perpetually repeated himself; and, instead of plunging boldly into the heart of his subject, and at once grappling with the charges brought against his client, he dwelt upon her youth, on the agony of mind and body which she had undergone for so many months, and on the misery which she must have endured when she gave birth to her last infant in disgrace and tears. Suddenly, however, he rallied; and declared, with an energy as startling as it was unexpected, that, although the sufferings which he had enumerated were of themselves almost a sufficient punishment for the crimes of which she was accused, he had no intention of asking an acquittal upon such grounds.

"No, gentlemen of the jury," he exclaimed, vehemently, "we seek no such subterfuge—we desire no impunity which does not restore our honour. We have already endured enough, more than enough; we care not to remain a mark for the finger of scorn and of suspicion; we must leave this court not only free, but justified. I maintain, gentlemen of the jury, that we have a right to demand this; and I have no fear but that you will feel as I do. What has been proved against the accused? I will tell you in a few words. It has been proved that she was pretty and good-so pretty and so good, that half the young peasants of the village sought to win her affections; that she was industrious,

obliging, and modest; and that so pre-eminently, that, although poor and humble, the daughter of a daily labourer, and a menial in the family of a richer neighbour, she was chosen by the son of her master for a wife. I will even recal to your minds the fact that he would have won her more lightly, and that it was only when he became convinced of the uselessness of his illicit addresses, that he came forward loyally and generously to offer her his hand-for this circumstance tends to prove her worth-aye, and that hand was given despite the reproaches and opposition of his relatives, who, in their ignorance of the just value of qualities like hers, believed their kinsman, the heir of a few acres of land and a few thousands of hoarded francs, to be degrading himself by such an alliance. You have heard that the marriage was an unhappy one, and it has been inferred that my client was the cause of this unhappiness; but I will merely ask you to reflect upon what you have seen and heard this day, ere you credit the assertion. The prisoner is accused of having attempted the life of her husband by poison. Where was the husband-the intended victim-when his would-be murderess was arraigned for the offence? Where was he? I will tell you, gentlemen: so securely hidden away, that even the emissaries of his vindictive aunt could not trace him out, and drag him hither to appear against a traduced and injured wife. What was the poison? You must allow me to fall back upon the evidence, and to add to it a most material fact. The accusation sets forth that Rosalie, assisted by her aunt, prepared a pan of cabbage-soup for the dinner and supper of the family, and that of this soup they all partook at noon; it was then set aside till evening, when it was once more placed upon the fire; and at five o'clock, Baptiste being still absent at the wine-shop, the prisoner and her female relative again ate of the soup; and, the embers of the fire being still warm, the pan was carefully surrounded by hot ashes, to await his return. More than once the lid of the pan was raised to stir the contents, lest they should adhere to the bottom of the vessel; and this precaution was taken by the aunt herself, who never moved from the chimneycorner from the termination of her own supper to the return of her nephew, who, according to his usual habit, was far from sober, and who, after partaking of the soup, was attacked by violent sickness. On the following morning, the aunt you have seen and heard her, gentlemen, and can consequently appreciate her character-showed the dregs of the soup, upon

which there floated a species of white flaky film, with infinite mystery, to half-a-dozen chosen friends; after which, she herself flung out the residue of the soup beside the door of the house, where pigs and poultry could alike devour it, and where it doubtlessly was devoured, without any detriment to either from the ashes, which, in the action of stirring the contents, she had herself, beyond all doubt, introduced into the mixture. Why, if she indeed suspected poison, did she cleanse the vessel with her own hands? Why did she, whose god was mammon, incur the risk of poisoning the animals who might partake of it? Great stress was laid upon the fact of the vomiting by which her nephew was attacked after having eaten of this soup; but we have shown that he was a man of intemperate habits, who was subject to this malady; and our wonder should rather be excited by the fact, that he could, while full of wine, have swallowed a mess of this description, than that it should have produced, under the circumstances, the effect ascribed to it.

"Gentlemen of the jury, before God and society, is Rosalie guilty of having attempted, in that soup, to poison her husband? We calmly await your decision. We now come to the second charge. On a certain evening the farm of Baptiste's father and aunt is fired; the two women are seated in the common room, or house, as the witnesses have universally described it, meaning thereby the single apartment not used as a sleepingchamber; this room looks upon the farm-yard; the prisoner is near the window, occupied in repairing her husband's linen; the aunt, according to her habit, is dozing near the fire. Rosalie leaves the room for a few minutes, and shortly after her return remarks that she hears an extraordinary noise upon the premises; upon which she is told that she is a fool, and always full of absurd fancies; but, notwithstanding this rebuff, she again exclaims that she is sure something must be wrong, and that she smells an odour of burnt straw. The words are scarcely uttered, when a body of flame bursts from an adjacent barn; upon which the accused, uttering a loud scream, rushes to the bedside of her sleeping child, hurriedly wraps it in a blanket, and leaves the house at all speed.

"Was this extraordinary? Was this unnatural? Was this a proof of guilt? M. le Procureur has decided in the affirmative; but I boldly demur to his conclusion. The first impulse of the mother was to save her infant; and in this instance it must have

been doubly powerful, since, disappointed in all her other affections, the child of her bosom was all in all to her. You have been told that she lent no assistance in extinguishing the fire; and, personally, I admit that she I did not do so. It has been asserted, upon oath, that no one knew where she was hidden until the flames were extinguished; and yet it has been proved that, on leaving her home, she made her way, with her precious burden, to the cottage of her aged and widowed father, who hurried, at her entreaty, to the farm, while she remained alone in his hovel to watch over her infant. We would have produced that father to swear to the fact, gentlemen of the jury, but he has been summoned to a higher tribunal than ours; he was poor, but he was not too poor to feel-humble, but not too humble to be beyond the reach of shame ;and the birth of his last grandchild in a prison -I cannot, I dare not dwell upon this subject, gentlemen of the jury-I am warned by the suffocating sobs behind me that my zeal is degenerating into cruelty; suffice it, then, that the unhappy old man is dead, and that thus one important witness has been lost to us.

"M. le Procureur expatiated largely also upon the expressions of bitter hopelessness, which were from time to time forced from the wrung heart of my unhappy client. She 'wished that the farm were burnt to the ground, and her husband reduced to the rank of a common labourer;' and even declared, while smarting under the tyranny of her near relatives, that 'she would gladly fire it herself, to be relieved from the life of wretchedness to which she was condemned.' I am not about to justify these expressions; I am ready to admit that they were alike unguarded and unseemly; but, gentlemen of the jury, remember the provocation! Is there one of us who has never rashly uttered a word that he would gladly recal? Do we, men of education, of station, and eager for the applause of the world, do we always measure our sentences, and weigh our phrases in a moment of passion? Do not let us lie to our own souls.

"Gentlemen of the jury, I have done. What the prosecution could not prove we cannot disprove; but we can appeal to our God-we can appeal to the judgment of all honest menand we can appeal to your decision. This we do boldly; this we do fearlessly; we are in your hands, and we are safe. You will restore a wife to her husband-a mother to her children— an outcast to her home. You will do this, for you have sworn to defend the right; and that right can only be maintained by our acquittal."

A low murmur of applause, which was, however, instantly checked, was heard throughout the court; and silence was no sooner restored, than the Procureur once more rose. He dissected with great forensic eloquence the address of the counsel, and alluded with keen and even indelicate sarcasm to the youth and good-looks of the prisoner, which had, as he asserted, stood her in stead of innocence. He commented upon the want of experience of her advocate, who had, as he declared, sacrificed his judgment to his enthusiasm ; and where he should have convinced, had only dazzled his hearers. He even appealed to the prisoner herself whether, had an acquittal been possible, she could have desired it, when, as she must be well aware, it could but entail upon her an existence of obloquy and suspicion; and, finally, he called upon the jury to deliver society from a woman, whose after career, should she leave that court absolved, might be readily prophesied from its antecedents.

I confess that as I eagerly watched the countenances of the jury, I entertained little hope for the wretched woman, who sat with clasped hands and bent head utterly motionless, as though she also were counting the brief moments of her forfeited existence; until, as the jury were preparing to retire, one of her guards laid his hand upon her shoulder, and whispered a few words in her ear, upon which she passively rose, and disappeared with the two gendarmes through the narrow door by which she had entered. Thence, as I was informed, she was conducted to a cell, where alone and in darkness, all prisoners await the verdict about to be pronounced upon them; a fearful ordeal to those upon whose guilt or innocence the arbiters of their fate were tardy in deciding.

And while she was thus abandoned to all the agonies of suspense, the court itself became a scene of bustle and excitement. The President, the Procureur, and half a dozen of their friends, had retired to the apartments of the former to partake of refreshments; and they had no sooner withdrawn, than a group of some twenty or thirty privileged individuals gathered together on the platform, some of whom were busied in devouring bon-bons, and exchanging jokes which elicited hearty, although suppressed laughter; while others drew the daily papers from their pockets, and were soon absorbed in politics, totally forgetful of the wretched woman whose fate was even then under discussion in the jury-room.

To myself this appeared the most painful feature of the trial; the careless mirth and heartless indifference to the agonies of a fellow