now, "in suits for freedom, and _in favorem_ libertatis_, they would
notice facts which come credibly before them, even though they be _dehors_
the record."[29] And so Roselius thundered it out. The consul for Baden at
New Orleans had gone to Europe some time before, and was now newly
returned. He had brought an official copy, from the records of the prefect
of Salome's native village, of the registered date of her birth. This is
what was now heard, and by it Salome and her friends knew to their joy,
and Belmonti to his chagrin, that she was two years older than her
kinsfolk had thought her to be.

Who followed Roselius is not known, but by and by men were bending the ear
to the soft persuasive tones and finished subtleties of the polished and
courted Grymes. He left, we are told, no point unguarded, no weapon
unused, no vantage-ground unoccupied. The high social standing and
reputation of his client were set forth at their best. Every slenderest
discrepancy of statement between Salome's witnesses was ingeniously
expanded. By learned citation and adroit appliance of the old Spanish laws
concerning slaves, he sought to ward off as with a Toledo blade the heavy
blows by which Roselius and his colleagues endeavored to lay upon the
defendants the burden of proof which the lower court had laid upon Salome.
He admitted generously the entire sincerity of Salome's kinspeople in
believing plaintiff to be the lost child; but reminded the court of the
credulity of ill-trained minds, the contagiousness of fanciful delusions,
and especially of what he somehow found room to call the inflammable
imagination of the German temperament. He appealed to history; to the
scholarship of the bench; citing the stories of Martin Guerre, the Russian
Demetrius, Perkin Warbeck, and all the other wonderful cases of mistaken
or counterfeited identity. Thus he and his associates pleaded for the
continuance in bondage of a woman whom their own fellow-citizens were
willing to take into their houses after twenty years of degradation and
infamy, make their oath to her identity, and pledge their fortunes to her
protection as their kinswoman.

Day after day the argument continued. At length the Sabbath broke its
continuity, but on Monday it was resumed, and on Tuesday Francis Upton
rose to make the closing argument for the plaintiff. His daughter, Miss
Upton, now of Washington, once did me the honor to lend me a miniature of
him made about the time of Sal