“And you afterwards sat a considerable time and drank freely?”
“Yes.”
“And although your recollection of what passed before that is so obscure and inaccurate, you perfectly remember everything that took place when standing on the balcony two hours later, and can swear to the very tone of a voice that uttered but three words: 'That is a lie, sir!'”
“Prisoner at the bar, conduct yourself with the respect due to the court and to the witness under its protection,” interposed the judge, with severity.
“You mistake me, my Lord,” said Curtis, in a voice of affected deprecation. “The words I spoke were not used as commenting on the witness or his veracity. They were simply those to which he swore, those which he heard once, and, although after a five hours' debauch, remained fast graven on his memory, along with the very manner of him who uttered them. I have nothing more to ask him. He may go down—down!” repeated he, solemnly; “if there be yet anything lower that he can descend to!”
Once more did the judge admonish the prisoner as to his conduct, and feelingly pointed out to him the serious injury he was inflicting upon his own case by this rash and intemperate course of proceeding; but Curtis smiled half contemptuously at the correction, and folded his arms with an air of dogged resignation.
It is rarely possible, from merely reading the published proceedings of a trial, to apportion the due degree of weight which the testimony of the several witnesses imposes, or to estimate that force which manner and conduct supply to the evidence when orally delivered. In the present case, the guilt of the accused man rested on the very vaguest circumstances, not one of which but could be easily and satisfactorily accounted for on other grounds. He admitted that he had passed through Stephen's Green on the night in question, and that possibly the tracks imputed to him were actually his own; but as to the reasons for his abrupt departure from town, or the secrecy which he observed when writing to the bootmaker,—these, he said, were personal matters which he would not condescend to enter upon, adding, sarcastically,—
“That though they might not prove very damning omissions in defence of a hackney-coach summons, he was quite aware that they might prove fatal to a man who stood charged with murder.”
After a number of witnesses were examined, whose testimony went to prove slight and unimportant facts, Anthony Fagan was called to show that a variety of bill transactions had passed between the prisoner and Rutledge, and that on more than one occasion very angry discussions had occurred between them in reference to these.
There were many points in which Fagan sympathized with the prisoner. Curtis was violently national in his politics; he bore an unmeasured hatred to all that was English; he was an extravagant asserter of popular rights: and yet, with all these, and, stranger still, with a coarse manner, and an address totally destitute of polish, he was in heart a haughty aristocrat, who despised the people most thoroughly. He was one of that singular class who seemed to retain to the very last years of the past century the feudal barbarism of a bygone age.