Before he could reply, my advocate broke in:—
“Pardon me, sir; but previous to the examination of this respectable witness, I would ask under what name he is to figure in this process? Is he here the Abbé d'Ervan, the agreeable and gifted frequenter of the Faubourg St. Germain?—is he the Chevalier Maupret, the companion and associate of the house of Bourbon?—or is he the no less celebrated and esteemed citizen Mehé e de la Touche, whose active exertions have been of such value in these eventful times that we should think no recompense sufficient for them had he not been paid by both parties? Yes, sir,” continued he, in an altered tone, “I repeat it: we are prepared to show that this man is unworthy of all credit; that he 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 abbé 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 Abbé, 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 sudden death?”
“Silence, sir!” cried the President, to whom the allusion to the Duc d'Enghien was peculiarly offensive, and who saw in the looks of the spectators with what force it told. “You know the prisoner?” said he, turning towards D'Ervan.
“I have that honor, sir,” said he, with a bland smile.
“State to the court the place and the occasion of your first meeting him.”