er. All that my soul had drunk in of beauty in the visible earth and
heavens--the light of setting suns--the radiance of the silver
stars--the breath of summer flowers, together with all which we imagine
of celestial purity and grace, seemed to me in her incarnated,
concentrated, and combined! And now lost--lost--forever lost!" The
violence of his emotions choked his utterance; and deeply and painfully
affected, I hastened from his presence.

Time sped as ever onwards, surely, silently; and justice, with her feet
of lead, but hands of iron, closed gradually upon her quarry. Alfred
Bourdon was arraigned before a jury of his countrymen, to answer finally
to the accusation of wilful murder preferred against him.

The evidence, as given before the committing magistrate, and the
coroner's inquisition, was repeated with some addition of passionate
expressions used by the prisoner indicative of a desire to be avenged on
the deceased. The cross-examination by the counsel for the defense was
able, but failed to shake the case for the prosecution. His own
admission, that no one but himself had access to the recess where the
poison was found, told fatally against him. When called upon to address
the jury, he delivered himself of a speech rather than a defense; of an
oratorical effusion, instead of a vigorous, and, if possible, damaging
commentary upon the evidence arrayed against him. It was a labored, and
in part eloquent, exposition of the necessary fallibility of human
judgment, illustrated by numerous examples of erroneous verdicts. His
peroration I jotted down at the time:--"Thus, my lord and gentlemen of
the jury, is it abundantly manifest, not only by these examples, but by
the testimony which every man bears in his own breast, that God could not
have willed, could not have commanded, his creatures to perform a
pretended duty, which he vouchsafed them no power to perform righteously.
Oh, be sure that if he had intended, if he had commanded you to pronounce
irreversible decrees upon your fellow-man, quenching that life which is
his highest gift, he would have endowed you with gifts to perform that
duty rightly. Has he done so? Ask not alone the pages dripping with
innocent blood which I have quoted, but your own hearts! Are you,
according to the promise of the serpent-tempter, 'gods, knowing good from
evil?' of such clear omniscience, that you can hurl an unprepared soul
before the tribunal of its Maker, in the full assuranc