“I know it,” she said, meekly, “I know it—yet, pause—what would you think of the justice of a judge, who should say to one suspected of crime—‘Your guilt is so clear, that it is useless to charge you with it, or to hear the testimony, or to listen to what you might have to say in your defence,’ and so proceed to condemn him? Such things were never, surely, done, in the darkest ages, or under the most despotic rulers. And is that guilt, of which I am suspected, of so heinous a character as to preclude me from the privilege extended even to criminals—the privilege of a trial?” She paused—but he continued to regard her with a stern, set face, without replying. Drooping over the table, and leaning heavily upon it, she spoke again, and her voice fell in low, but clear, melodious tones, as she said—“God and man, and I, myself, have made you my judge, and the arbiter of my destiny here. It is an awful power. You have made me feel it to be such. It is an awful power, because it is a subtile, invisible power—higher, and deeper, and broader than any law. I have no appeal from it—none! Nor—please to understand me—do I wish for any—for if all the world were to clear me, I should still be condemned, if you condemned me. And oh! listen, and believe me—believe me, for it is from my deep heart that I speak this truth—if you had the power and the will to doom me to death—my instincts would teach me rather to receive death at your hands, than to save my life by appealing from your judgment to another tribunal. I am loyal. I am faithful! God knoweth that I am. Let me prove it. Put me upon my defence. Do not—oh, do not persist in condemning me, unheard.”
“Catherine,” he answered, in a softened voice—“you are not condemned; if you were, you would not be standing here at my side.”
“What do you mean? good Heaven!”
“This,” he replied with a sudden change of manner, as though angry with himself for his transient relenting. “This! that oftentimes it happens that the only mercy we can show the guilty, is not to bring them to trial! To openly recognize guilt, is to be obliged to punish it. If we distinctly accuse, we are bound to prove, and if we prove, to condemn and sentence.”
“And is my case such a one?”
“Your case is such a one.”
“Yet still I beg to be tried! For if not to try them is often the only way to save the guilty, to try them is oftener the only way to clear the innocent. Accuse me—hear my defence, and be yourself my judge. I ask no other.”
“Of what avail were it to rehearse your acts of falsehood and treachery. You know them this moment even better than I do.”
“Falsehood and treachery—just Heaven!”
“Yes, madam, those were the words I used.”