rkle over detected iniquity, the
haughty look of insolent condemnation.

"Tell me of this--what does this mean?" wrote my adviser, on a slip of
paper, and handed it, unperceived, to me.

"It is true!" whispered I, in an accent that almost rent my heart to
utter.

The commotion in the court was now great; the intense anxiety to catch a
sight of me, added to the expressions of astonishment making up a
degree of tumult that the officers essayed vainly to suppress. That the
evidence thus delivered had been a great shock to my advisers was easily
seen; and though Foxley proceeded to cross-examine the Colonel, the
statement was not to be shaken.

"We purpose to afford my learned friend a further exercise for his
ingenuity," said M'Clelland; "for we shall now summon to the table a
gentleman who has known the plaintiff long and intimately; who knew him
in his real character of secret political agent abroad; and who will be
able not alone to give a correct history of the individual, but also
to inform the jury by what circumstances the first notion of this most
audacious fraud was first suggested, and how it occurred to him to
assume the character and name he had dared to preface this suit by
taking. Before the witness shall leave that table I pledge myself to
establish, beyond the possibility of a cavil, one of the most daring,
most outrageous, and consummate pieces of rascality that has ever come
before the notice of a jury. It is needless that I should say one word
to exonerate my learned friends opposite,--they could, of course, know
nothing of the evidence we shall produce here this day; the worst that
can be alleged against them will be, the insufficiency of their own
searches, and the inadequacy of the proofs on which they began this suit
I can afford to reflect, however, upon their professional skill, as the
recompense for not aspersing their reputation; and I will say that a
more baseless, unsupported action never was introduced into a court of
justice. Call Count Anatole Ysaffich!"

I shall not attempt to describe a scene, the humiliation of which
no vindication of my honor can ever erase. For nearly three hours I
listened to such details, not one of which I could boldly deny, and
yet not one of which was the pure truth, that actually made me feel a
perfect monster of treachery and corruption. Of that life which my own
lawyer had given such a picturesque account, a new version was now to
be heard; the history of