erland. Oh, that he (the learned gentleman)
could follow her to her early home!--that he could paint her with the
first blush and dawn of innocence, tinting her virgin cheek as the morning
sun tinted the unsullied snows of her native Jungfrau!--that he could lead
the gentlemen of the jury to that Swiss cottage where the gentle Felicite
(such was the lady's name) lisped her early prayer--that he could show
them the mountains that had echoed with her songs (since made so very
popular by Madame Stockhausen)--that he could conjure up in that court the
goats whose lacteal fluid was wont to yield to the pressure of her virgin
fingers--the kids that gambolled and made holiday about her--the birds
that whistled in her path--the streams that flowed at her feet--the
avalanches, with their majestic thunder, that fell about her. Would he
could subpoena such witnesses! then would the jury feel, what his poor
words could never make them feel--the loss of his injured client. On one
hand would be seen the simple Swiss maiden--a violet among the rocks--a
mountain dove--an inland pearl--a rainbow of the glaciers--a creature pure
as her snows, but not as cold; and on the other the fallen wife--a
monument of shame! This was a commercial country; and the jury would learn
with additional horror that it was in the sweet confidence of a commercial
transaction that the defendant obtained access to his interesting victim.
Yes, gentlemen, (said Mr. P.,) it was under the base, the heartless, the
dastardly excuse of business, that the plaintiff poured his venom in the
ear of a too confiding woman. He had violated the sacred bonds of human
society--the noblest ties that hold the human heart--the sweetest tendrils
that twine about human affections. This should be shown to the jury.
Letters from the plaintiff would be read, in which his heart--or rather
that ace of spades he carried in his breast and called his heart--would be
laid bare in open court. But the gentlemen of the jury would teach a
terrible lesson that day. They would show that the socialist should not
guide his accursed bark into the tranquil seas of domestic comfort, and
anchor it upon the very hearthstone of conjugal felicity. No--as the
gentlemen of the jury were husbands and fathers, as they were fathers and
not husbands, as they were neither one nor the other, but hoped to be
both--they would that day hurl such a thunderbolt at the pocket of the
defendant--they would so thrice-gild the