SECTION V.
The day fixed for the trial came. I felt prepared, strong at all points save one, that of my client’s parentage. There was a suspicion about it which would not tell well with the jury. As to the law which governed the case, provided no knowledge of the first marriage were brought home to my client prior to the springing of her mortgage, I was sure of it; and I believe that no one of my brethren at the “Bar” would now dispute the correctness of my opinion. But the fact of knowledge, a jury might infer from very slight evidence, and my client’s seeming bastardy and strange ignorance of her father, and of her mother even, beyond the certainty that she once lived and cared well for her young days, were better fitted to excite suspicion and clothe her in the garb of an adventurer, than to secure pity or be urged as arguments of innocence. This was the assailable point. I had thought much upon it, and had concluded that it was to be best defended by an open avowal, and a bold appeal to the more generous sympathies of our nature. Thus armed, I entered the court-room.
The court was upon the bench, and the opposite party, with his counsel, was there, ready, expecting the battle, and confident of a success which was to take from the widow all that she possessed. Mr. Cornelius was there. Tall and meagre in his person, with cheeks hollowed and hair whitened, by age and long continued labor and great self-denial, ending in extreme penuriousness, his eyes alone retained a show of the vigor of youth. Gray, cold and piercing, they rolled quickly and incessantly from side to side, as if every where and at all times in search of the yellow metal upon which his soul fed, and grew smaller and smaller, even to a pin’s point. His brow was thickly furrowed with the lines of gain; but it was a noble one, and showed a strong intellect bound in chains of its own forging—enslaved to Mammon. Yes, John Cornelius cannot say, on that last day when rich and poor shall stand, equal at the feet and shoulders, before their common God, that he labored according to his light. Success in life, success in any department of the business of life, a success extended over a quarter of a century of years, presupposes intellect, and a great deal of it. A fortune may be won by the turn of a card, and a fortune may be lost as well; but that fortune which is gathered slowly and surely, the result of foresight, of a deep knowledge of the ways of commerce, its growth, fluctuations and changes, of its adaptation to the wants of men and the humors of the times; the result of a providence which sees the coming storm and provides for it, which sees the prosperous breeze and catches it—such a fortune is the result of a strong intellect, equally with any greatness whatever. John Cornelius cannot say that he labored according to his light!
There he sat, and as he clutched, with his long, thin, bony fingers, at the papers which lay spread out upon the table before him, as if they were the stout line which was to draw unto him the gold he coveted, I thought of the story of the Rich Man and the Lamb, told in the olden writ.
My client was also beside me. Still habited in black—she might well mourn the wrong she had suffered, if not the man she had loved—the veil lifted from her face, a little pale with hope and sorrow, and a womanly modesty possessing in quick turn all her features.
She won the favor of the court; and the jury, as each was sworn and took his seat within the box, whispered compassion.
——
SECTION VI.
My adversaries saw, clearly enough, the ground upon which I stood, and the able junior counsel, in opening the case, with great art alluded to it, and fully shadowed forth the position in the defense which was to be most strenuously attacked. “The plaintiff’s mortgage was undoubted; I had myself acknowledged it in the answer on file in the record; neither was the amount alleged by the defendant to have been received by her late husband from the succession of her mother to be disputed, the evidence was conclusive; but the marriage was illegal; that would hardly be questioned. Was the defendant in good faith at the time of its celebration? Was she in good faith when her late husband took possession of her mother’s succession? Was she in such good faith as would secure to her the rights of a legal marriage? These were the questions to be answered, and he believed that the evidence which he was about to bring home to the knowledge of the jury, would answer them most emphatically in the negative. He then spoke of Andrews’ long residence in New Orleans; of his many acquaintances there; of his well-known marriage with the daughter of a French Jew; of his desertion of his wife; of her return, with her aged father, to France; of the second marriage, hastily made up; of the plaintiff’s sudden appearance in that city, claiming a position due alone to honesty, while Andrews spoke of her to his associates as his concubine; of the hints which she had received of the imposition she was striving to practice upon others, or which had been in reality practiced upon herself; and of the deaf ear which she ever turned to such warnings; of her feigned incredulity; and of the mystery which hung over and covered, with impenetrable darkness, the history of her birth. He closed with an appeal to the judgment of the jury—cautioned them against the blinding influence of the passions—spoke of the dangerous eloquence of a woman in weeds—besought them to keep their reason unclouded, and not suffer sympathy to work a wrong—and asked for justice, sheer justice, the justice of the law, that right might be vindicated without respect of persons.”
The evidence went far to sustain the labored and wily exposition of the advocate. The first marriage; the desertion; Andrews’ long residence in New Orleans; his numerous acquaintances, putting inquiry within the easy reach of every one; his visit to the North; his early return accompanied by the defendant, who claimed the privileges and honors of a wife; his disclaimer of her right to such privileges and honors, repeatedly made to his associates; the many hints which the defendant had received from the well disposed and compassionate, as to her true position, early in her marriage; her confused replies, and faint and soon relinquished inquiries; her unwillingness to speak of her family, and studied silence whenever the subject was alluded to; the suspicion which rested upon her mother’s name, and the existence of the first wife, living even at that time, in retirement and sorrow in one of the small towns in the north of France, all was proved by testimony which seemed fair enough.