C., went down to
Westminster, to move the Court of Queen's Bench, multitudes besieged it.
Protestant champions and Papal ecclesiastics vied in their efforts to
get seats. The writ had gone from judge's chambers returnable to
the full court. Sister Suspiciosa, bearing the infant Ambrosius, and
supported by two novices and Father Certificatus, had been smuggled into
court through mysterious passages in its rear. Mrs. Ginx also, brought
from Rosemary Street by the little man who provided her with a bonnet
trimmed with orange-colored ribbons, sat staring with red eyes at her
child, now enveloped in a robe that was embroidered with little crosses.

Why need I tell you, how dead silence fell upon the Court after the stir
caused by the entrance of the judges; how everybody knew what was coming
when a master beneath the bench rose, and called out, "Re Ginx,
an infant, Exparte Mary Ginx!" How the Chief Justice, fresh and
rosy-looking, then blew his nose in a delicate mauve-colored silk
handkerchief: how he tried and discarded half-a-dozen pens, amid
breathless silence; how in his blandest manner he said: "Who appears
for the Respondent?" and Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C., and Mr. Octavius
Ernestus, Q. C., rose together to say that Mr. Ernestus did!

Mr. Ernestus was a Catholic. He was assisted by half-a-dozen counsel.
He riddled the affidavits on the other side, and read voluminous ones on
his own; bitterly animadverted upon the absence of an affidavit by the
father; held up to the scorn of a civilized world the course pursued
towards his meek and gentle clients by the "fanatical zealots of the
Protestant Detectoral Association;" in moving tones referred to the
shrinking of "quiet recluses, from the gaze of a rude, unsympathizing
world;" cited cases from the time of Magna Charta, down; called upon the
Court to vindicate Protestant justice, ending his peroration with the
aphorism of Lord Mansfield, Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

One cannot do Justice to Mr. Dignam Bailey's argument, when after lunch
he rose to reply. He was logical and passionate, vindictive and pathetic
by turns. He inveighed against the Lady Superior, against her attorneys,
against Father Certificatus, against Ginx,--"craven to his heaven-born
rights of political and religious freedom,"--against the Roman Catholic
religion, the Pope, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Virgin Mary. The
Court knew, and every one else knew, that this was pure pyrotechny,
and Mr. Bailey