e whose testimony the
court now calls is a hired spy and bribed calumniator,--the instigator
to the treason he prosecutes, the designer of the schemes for which
other men's blood has paid the penalty. Is this abbe without, and
gendarme within, to be at large in the world, ensnaring the unsuspecting
youth of France by subtle and insidious doctrines disguised under the
semblance of after-dinner gayety? Are we to feel that on such evidence
as this, the fame, the honor, the life of every man is to rest?--he,
who earns his livelihood by treason, and whose wealth is gathered in the
bloody sawdust beneath the guillotine!"

"We shall not hear these observations longer," said the President, with
an accent of severity. "You may comment on the evidence of the witness
hereafter, and, if you are able to do so, disprove it. His character is
under the protection of the court."

"No, sir!" said the advocate, with energy; "no court, however high,--no
tribunal, beneath that of Heaven itself, whose decrees we dare not
question,--can throw a shield over a man like this. There are crimes
which stain the nation they occur in; which, happening in our age, make
men sorry for their generation, and wish they had lived in other times."

"Once more, sir, I command you to desist!" interrupted the President.

"If I dare to dictate to the honorable court?" said the so-called Abbe,
in an accent of the most honeyed sweetness, and with a smile of the most
winning expression, "I would ask permission for the learned gentleman to
proceed. These well-arranged paragraphs, this indignation got by heart,
must have vent, since they 're paid for; and it would save the tribunal
the time which must be consumed in listening to them hereafter."

"If," said the advocate, "the coolness and indifference to blood which
the headsman exhibits, be a proof of guilt in the victim before him, I
could congratulate the prosecution on their witness. But," cried he,
in an accent of wild excitement, "great Heavens! are we again fallen
on such times as to need atrocity like this? Is the terrible ordeal
of blood through which we have passed to be renewed once more? Is the
accusation to be hoarded, the calumnious evidence secreted, the charge
held back, till the scaffold is ready,--and then the indictment, the
slander, the sentence, and the death, to follow on one another like the
flash and the thunder? Is the very imputation of having heard from a
Bourbon to bear its prestige of