The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney. Samuel Warren
shocked at the change which so brief an interval had wrought upon him. It had done the work of years. Despair—black, utter despair—was written in every lineament of his expressive countenance.
"I have requested to see you," said the unhappy culprit, "rather than Dr. Curteis, because he, I know, is bitterly prejudiced against me. But you will not refuse, I think, the solemn request of a dying man—for a dying man I feel myself to be—however long or short the interval which stands between me and the scaffold. It is not with a childish hope that any assertion of mine can avail before the tribunal of the law against the evidence adduced this day, that I, with all the solemnity befitting a man whose days are numbered, declare to you that I am wholly innocent of the crime laid to my charge. I have no such expectation; I seek only that you, in pity of my youth and untimely fate, should convey to her whom I have madly presumed to worship this message: 'Alfred Bourdon was mad, but not blood-guilty; and of the crime laid to his charge he is innocent as an unborn child.'"
"The pure and holy passion, young man," said I, somewhat startled by his impressive manner, "however presumptuous, as far as social considerations are concerned, it might be, by which you affect to be inspired, is utterly inconsistent with the cruel, dastardly crime of which such damning evidence has an hour since been given"—
"Say no more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she could not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those whom you would coin your heart to serve and bless! Ah, sir," he continued, whilst tears of agony streamed through his firmly-closed fingers, "you cannot conceive the unutterable bitterness of the pang which rends the heart of him who feels that he is not only despised, but loathed, hated, execrated, by her whom his soul idolizes! Mine was no boyish, transient passion: it has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. My life has been but one long dream of her. All that my soul had drunk in of beauty in the visible earth and heavens—the light of setting suns—the radiance of the silver stars—the breath of summer flowers, together with all which we imagine of celestial purity and grace, seemed to me in her incarnated, concentrated, and combined! And now lost—lost—forever lost!" The violence of his emotions choked his utterance; and deeply and painfully affected, I hastened from his presence.
Time sped as ever onwards, surely, silently; and justice, with her feet of lead, but hands of iron, closed gradually upon her quarry. Alfred Bourdon was arraigned before a jury of his countrymen, to answer finally to the accusation of wilful murder preferred against him.
The evidence, as given before the committing magistrate, and the coroner's inquisition, was repeated with some addition of passionate expressions used by the prisoner indicative of a desire to be avenged on the deceased. The cross-examination by the counsel for the defense was able, but failed to shake the case for the prosecution. His own admission, that no one but himself had access to the recess where the poison was found, told fatally against him. When called upon to address the jury, he delivered himself of a speech rather than a defense; of an oratorical effusion, instead of a vigorous, and, if possible, damaging commentary upon the evidence arrayed against him. It was a labored, and in part eloquent, exposition of the necessary fallibility of human judgment, illustrated by numerous examples of erroneous verdicts. His peroration I jotted down at the time:—"Thus, my lord and gentlemen of the jury, is it abundantly manifest, not only by these examples, but by the testimony which every man bears in his own breast, that God could not have willed, could not have commanded, his creatures to perform a pretended duty, which he vouchsafed them no power to perform righteously. Oh, be sure that if he had intended, if he had commanded you to pronounce irreversible decrees upon your fellow-man, quenching that life which is his highest gift, he would have endowed you with gifts to perform that duty rightly. Has he done so? Ask not alone the pages dripping with innocent blood which I have quoted, but your own hearts! Are you, according to the promise of the serpent-tempter, 'gods, knowing good from evil?' of such clear omniscience, that you can hurl an unprepared soul before the tribunal of its Maker, in the full assurance that you have rightly loosed the silver cord which he had measured, have justly broken the golden bowl which he had fashioned! Oh, my lord," he concluded, his dark eyes flashing with excitement, "it is possible that the first announcement of my innocence of this crime, to which you will give credence, may be proclaimed from the awful tribunal of him who alone cannot err! How if he, whose eye is even now upon us, should then proclaim, 'I too, sat in judgment on the day when you presumed to doom your fellow-worm; and I saw that the murderer was not in the dock, but on the bench!' Oh, my lord, think well of what you do—pause ere you incur such fearful hazard; for be assured, that for all these things God will also bring you to judgment!"
He ceased, and sank back exhausted. His fervid declamation produced a considerable impression upon the auditory; but it soon disappeared before the calm, impressive charge of the judge, who re-assured the startled jury, by reminding them that their duty was to honestly execute the law, not to dispute about its justice. For himself, he said, sustained by a pure conscience, he was quite willing to incur the hazard hinted at by the prisoner. After a careful and luminous summing up, the jury, with very slight deliberation, returned a verdict of "Guilty."
As the word passed the lips of the foreman of the jury, a piercing shriek rang through the court. It proceeded from a tall figure in black, who, with closely-drawn veil, had sat motionless during the trial, just before the dock. It was the prisoner's mother. The next instant she rose, and throwing back her veil wildly exclaimed, "He is innocent—innocent, I tell ye! I alone"—
"Mother! mother! for the love of Heaven be silent!" shouted the prisoner with frantic vehemence, and stretching himself over the front of the dock, as if to grasp and restrain her.
"Innocent, I tell you!" continued the woman. "I—I alone am the guilty person! It was I alone that perpetrated the deed! He knew it not, suspected it not, till it was too late. Here," she added, drawing a sheet of paper from her bosom—"here is my confession, with each circumstance detailed!"
As she waved it over her head, it was snatched by her son, and, swift as lightning, torn to shreds. "She is mad! Heed her not—believe her not!" He at the same time shouted at the top of his powerful voice, "She is distracted—mad! Now, my lord, your sentence! Come!"
The tumult and excitement in the court no language which I can employ would convey an adequate impression of. As soon as calm was partially restored, Mrs. Bourdon was taken into custody: the prisoner was removed; and the court adjourned, of course without passing sentence.
It was even as his mother said! Subsequent investigation, aided by her confessions, amply proved that the fearful crime was conceived and perpetrated by her alone, in the frantic hope of securing for her idolized son the hand and fortune of Miss Armitage. She had often been present with him in his laboratory, and had thus become acquainted with the uses to which certain agents could be put. She had purloined the key of the recess; and he, unfortunately too late to prevent the perpetration of the crime, had by mere accident discovered the abstraction of the poison. His subsequent declarations had been made for the determined purpose of saving his mother's life by the sacrifice of his own!
The wretched woman was not reserved to fall before the justice of her country. The hand of God smote her ere the scaffold was prepared for her. She was smitten with frenzy, and died raving in the Metropolitan Lunatic Asylum. Alfred Bourdon, after a lengthened imprisonment, was liberated. He called on me, by appointment, a few days previous to leaving this country forever; and I placed in his hands a small pocket-Bible, on the fly-leaf of which was written one word—"Ellen!" His dim eye lighted up with something of its old fire as he glanced at the characters; he then closed the book, placed it in his bosom, and waving me a mute farewell—I saw he durst not trust himself to speak—hastily departed. I never saw him more!
"THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS."
In the month of February of the year following that which witnessed