anating from high quarters, had a very extensive influence upon
most of what met the eye or the ear of my poor wife. She, on the day of
trial, was supported by her brother; and by that time she needed support
indeed. I was reported to be dying; her little son was dead; neither had
she been allowed to see him. Perhaps these things, by weaning her from
all further care about life, might have found their natural effect in
making her indifferent to the course of the trial, or even to its issue.
And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering
sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies, 'the
hectic of a moment,' came back upon her, and prevailed over the
deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry
light--sweet and woful to remember. Then----but why linger? I hurry to
the close: she was pronounced guilty; whether by a jury or a bench of
judges, I do not say--having determined, from the beginning, to give no
hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of
the slightest consequence. Guilty she was pronounced: but sentence at
that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the muff or
other circumstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These
circumstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants
only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: _that_
naturally diminished their value. And, on the other side, evidence was
arrayed, perjury was suborned, that would have wrecked a wilderness of
simple truth trusting to its own unaided forces. What followed? Did
this judgment of the court settle the opinion of the public? Opinion of
the public! Did it settle the winds? Did it settle the motion of the
Atlantic? Wilder, fiercer, and louder grew the cry against the wretched
accuser: mighty had been the power over the vast audience of the
dignity, the affliction, the perfect simplicity, and the Madonna beauty
of the prisoner. That beauty so childlike, and at the same time so
saintly, made, besides, so touching in its pathos by means of the
abandonment--the careless abandonment and the infinite desolation of her
air and manner--would of itself, and without further aid, have made many
converts. Much more was done by the simplicity of her statements, and
the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points
in her own favour--the indifference, as every heart perceived, of
despairing grief. Then c