The House of the White Shadows

"But it needs not that; had he not spoken, the issue would be the same; for painful and shocking as is the spectacle, you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. If that is not sufficient to move you unhesitatingly to your duty, cast him from your thoughts and weigh only the evidence of truth which has been laid unfolded to you.

"As I speak, a picture of that terrible night, in the darkness of which the fearful deed was committed, rises before me.

"I see the river's bank in a mist of shadows; I see two forms moving onward, one a monster in human shape, the other that of a child who had never wronged a fellow creature, a child whose spirit was joyous and whose amiable disposition won every heart.

"It is not with her willing consent that this monster is in her company. He has followed her stealthily until he finds an opportunity to be alone with her, at a time when she is least likely to have friends near her; and in a place where she is entirely at his mercy. He forces his attentions upon her; she repulses him. She turns towards her home; he thrusts her roughly back. Enraged at her obstinacy, he threatens to kill her; his threats are heard by persons returning home along the river's bank, and, until the sound of their footsteps has died away and they are out of hearing, he keeps his victim silent by force.

"Being alone with her once more, he renews his infamous suit. She still repulses him, and then commences a struggle which must have made the angels weep to witness.

"In vain his victim pleads, in vain she struggles; she clings to him and begs for her life in tones that might melt the stoniest heart; but this demon has no heart. He winds his handkerchief round her neck, he beats and tears her, as is proved by the bruises on her poor body. The frightful struggle ends, and the deed is accomplished which condemns the wretch to life-long torture in this world and to perdition in the next.

"Do not lose sight of this picture and of the evidence which establishes it; and let me warn you not to be diverted by sophistry or specious reasoning from the duty which you are here to perform.

"A most vile and horrible crime has been committed; the life of a child has been cruelly, remorselessly, wickedly sacrificed; her blood calls for justice on her murderer; and upon you rests the solemn responsibility of not permitting the escape of a wretch whose guilt has been proven by evidence so convincing as to leave no room for doubt in the mind of any human being who reasons in accordance with facts.

"I cannot refrain from impressing upon you the stern necessity of allowing no other considerations than those supplied by a calm judgment to guide you in the delivery of your verdict. I should be wanting in my duty if I did not warn you that there have been cases in which the guilty have unfortunately escaped by the raising of side issues which had but the remotest bearing upon the crimes of which they stood accused. It is not by specious logic that a guilty man can be proved innocent. Innocence can only be established by facts, and the facts laid before you are fatal in the conclusion to be deduced from them. Bear these facts in mind, and do not allow your judgment to be clouded even by the highest triumphs of eloquence. I know of no greater reproach from which men of sensibility can suffer than that which proceeds from the consciousness that, in an unguarded moment, they have allowed themselves to be turned aside from the performance of a solemn duty. May you have no cause for such a reproach! May you have no cause to lament that you have allowed your judgment to be warped by a display of passionate and fevered oratory! Let a sense of justice alone be your guide. Justice we all desire, nothing more and nothing less. The law demands it of you; society demands it of you. The safety of your fellow citizens, the honour of young girls, of your sisters, your daughters, and others dear to you, depend upon your verdict. For if wretches like the prisoner are permitted to walk in our midst, to pursue their savage courses, to live their evil lives, unchecked, life and honour are in fatal peril. The duty you have to perform is a sacred duty-see that you perform it righteously and conscientiously, and bear in mind that the eyes of the Eternal are upon you."

This appeal, delivered with intense earnestness, produced a profound impression. In the faces of the jury was written the fate of Gautran. They looked at each other with stern resolution. Under these circumstances, when the result of the trial appeared to be a foregone conclusion, it might have been expected, the climax of interest having apparently been reached, that the rising of the Advocate to speak for the defence would have attracted but slight attention. It was not so. At that moment the excitement reached a painful pitch, and every person in the court, with the exception of the jury and the judges, leant forward with eager and absorbed expectation.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ADVOCATES DEFENCE-THE VERDICT

He spoke in a calm and passionless voice, the clear tones of which had an effect resembling that of a current of cold air through an over-heated atmosphere. The audience had been led to expect a display of fevered and passionate oratory; but neither in the Advocate's speech nor in his manner of delivering it was there any fire or passion; it was chiefly remarkable for earnestness and simplicity.

His first words were a panegyric of justice, the right of dispensing which had been placed in mortal hands by a Supreme Power which watched its dispensation with a jealous eye. He claimed for himself that the leading principle of his life, not only in his judicial, but in his private career, had been a desire for justice, in small matters as well as in great, for the lowliest equally with the loftiest of human beings. Before the bar of justice, prince and peasant, the most ignorant and the most highly cultured, the meanest and the most noble in form and feature, were equal. They had been told that justice was demanded from them by law and by society. He would supply a strange omission in this appeal, and he would tell them that, primarily and before every other consideration, the prisoner it was who demanded justice from them.

"That an innocent girl has been done to death," said the Advocate, "is most unfortunately true, and as true that a man who inspires horror is charged with her murder. You have been told that you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. These are lamentable words to be used in an argument of accusation. The facts that the victim was of attractive, and that the accused is of repulsive appearance, should not weigh with you, even by a hair's weight, to the prejudice of the prisoner. If it does, I call upon you to remember that justice is blind to external impressions. And moreover, if in your minds you harbour a feeling such as exists outside this court against the degraded creature who stands before you, I charge you to dismiss it.

"All the evidence presented to you which bears directly upon the crime is circumstantial. A murder has been committed-no person saw it committed. The last person proved to have been in the murdered girl's company, is Gautran, her lover, as he declares himself to have been.

"And here I would say that I do not expect you to place the slightest credence upon the statements of this man. His unblushing, astonishing falsehoods prove that in him the moral sense is deadened, if indeed it ever existed. But his own statement that, after the manner of his brutal nature, he loved the girl, may be accepted as probable. It has been sufficiently proved that the girl had other lovers, who were passionately enamoured of her. She was left to herself, deprived of the protection and counsel of a devoted woman, who, unhappily, was absent at the fatal crisis in her life. She was easily persuaded and easily led. Who can divine by what influences she was surrounded, by what temptations she was beset, temptations and influences which may have brought upon her an untimely death?

"Gautran was hear to say, 'I will kill you-I will kill you!' He had threatened her before, and she lived to speak of it to her companions, and to permit him, without break or interruption in their intimacy, to continue to associate with her. What more probable than that this was one of his usual threats in his moments of passion, when he jealously believed that a rival was endeavouring to supplant him in her affections?

"The handkerchief found about her neck belonged to Gautran. The gift of a handkerchief among the lower classes is not uncommon, and it is frequently worn round the neck. Easy, then, for any murderer to pull it tight during the commission of the crime. But apart from this, the handkerchief does not fix the crime of murder upon Gautran or any other accused, for you have had it proved that the girl did not die by strangulation, but by drowning. These are bare facts, and I present them to you in bare form, without needless comment. I do not base my defence upon them, but upon what I am now about to say.

"If in a case of circumstantial evidence there is reasonable cause to believe that the evidence furnished is of insufficient weight to convict; and if on the other side, on the side of the accused, evidence is adduced which directly proves, according to the best judgment we are enabled to form of human action in supreme moments-as to the course it would take and the manner in which it would be displayed-that it is almost beyond the bounds of possibility and nature that the person can have committed the deed, you have no option, unless you yourselves are bent upon judicial murder, than to acquit that person, however vile his character may be, however degraded his career and antecedents. It is evidence of this description which I intend to submit to you at the conclusion of my remarks.

"The character of Gautran has been exposed and laid bare in all its vileness; the minuteness of the evidence is surprising; not the smallest detail has been overlooked or omitted to complete the picture of a ferocious, ignorant, and infamous being. Guilty, he deserves no mercy; innocent, he is not to be condemned because he is vile.

"In the world's history there are records of countries and times in which it was the brutal fashion to bring four-footed animals to the bar of justice, there solemnly to try them for witchcraft and evil deeds; and you will find upon examination of those records of man's incredible folly and ignorance, that occasionally even these beasts of the earth-pigs and such-like-have been declared innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. I ask no more for Gautran than the principle involved in these trials. Judge him, if you will, as you would an animal, but judge him in accordance with the principles of justice, which neither extenuates nor maliciously and unreasonably condemns.

"The single accusation of the murder of Madeline, a flower-girl, is the point to be determined, and you must not travel beyond it to other crimes and other misdeeds of which Gautran may have been guilty.

"It has been proved that the prisoner is possessed of great strength, that he is violent in his actions, uncontrollable in his passions, and fond of inflicting pain and prolonging it. He has not a redeeming feature in his coarse, animal nature. Thwarted, he makes the person who thwarts him suffer without mercy. An appeal to his humanity would be useless-he has no humanity; when crossed, he has been seen to behave like a wild beast. All this is in evidence, and has been strongly dwelt upon as proof of guilt. Most important is this evidence, and I charge you not for one moment to lose sight of it.