The point is appreciated by the court, though not, I fear, by the judge, who looks at me as though calculating the drop he should allow. Yes, it is all very well to jest about my mustache, but to be hanged by it, that is a different affair. And the case is very black against me.
“Has the prisoner any witnesses to call?” asks the judge.
“No,” I reply, “but I shall make you a speech.”
And thereupon I delight them with the following oration, an oration which should have gone on much longer than it did but for a most unforeseen interruption.
“My lord, the jury, and my peers,” I begin—remembering so much from my historical stories—“I am entirely guiltless of this extraordinary and infamous charge. No one but such a man as Fisher would have brought it!” [Here I point my finger at the unhappy tenant of Chickawungaree.]
“No one else of the brave English would have stooped to injure an innocent and defenceless stranger! As to the butler and the cook, you have seen their untruthful faces, you have heard their incredible testimony. I say no more regarding them. The policemen have only shown that they found me an unwilling and insulted—though invited—guest of the perfidious Fisher. What harm, then? Have you never been the unwilling guests of a distasteful host?
“Who am I? Why did I visit such a person as Fisher? I shall tell you. I am a French subject, a traveller in England. Only yesterday I arrived in London. How can I, then, have burgled Madame Thompson? Impossible! Absurd! I had not set my foot upon the shores of England—”
At this point the judge, in his dry voice, interrupts me to ask if I can bring any witnesses to prove this assertion.
“Witnesses?” I exclaim, not knowing what the devil to add to this dramatic cry, when, behold! I see, sent by Providence, a young man rising from his seat in the court. It is my fair-haired fellow-passenger!
“May I give evidence?” says he.