had great success in Paris, where Madame Manson became the object of general eulogy and interest. The members of the French Academy, who edit the Minerve, quoted passages from them as equal in eloquence to the sermons of Bossuet! In her first letter she declares she will unveil the mystery. May heaven grant her force to speak! Perhaps her life will be in danger, but at all events she will do justice to a brave officer-meaning M. Clemendot. Elsewhere she draws the following portrait of this brave officer, which certainly is not in the manner of Bossuet: 'His lower jaw projects; he has an enormous mouth and a mean nose; he squints; his complexion is wan; he is bald, and speaks through his nose; he is not taller than I am; his legs are like two gun-barrels; added to which, he has a rage for wearing short breeches and black stockings.' Probably it was this decent passage which inspired a poetical address to her that we have seen quoted in the Paris journals:

"J'ai vu de votre ésprit tout Paris tributaire!

On vous croit un secret: je vous en connais deux:
N'avez-vous celui de plaire!"

In the presence of M. Clemendot, and before the magistrate, she now owned being at Bancal's. The officer having retired, and her father having come in, she retracted all, saying she had only joked with the aid-de-camp. Her editor, who at first professes to believe her the most naïve and romantic of creatures, and who afterwards, when he quarrels with her, gives himself the lie, makes very light of these contradictions: an impassioned moment might conduct such a character to make a false confession, and to sustain it in a tete-a-tete. Madame Manson has proved that she can brave all sufferings but the inquisition of the thought-the question morale.' This was unanimously considered as satisfactory in Paris, or, what was better, as finely and delicately said.

Besought by her father to speak the truth, she declared she was at Bancal's, but that she could not recognize any of the persons concerned in the murder. Conducted to the place she pointed out the closet, the window, the table; declared that the assassin had shown her a piece of paper, on which was written, ‘if you speak, you perish.' She added, that she was in a man's dress, and that she had burnt her pantaloons, because they were spotted with blood; in fact,' says she, in her Memoirs,' I was so tired, and so hungry, for it was five o'clock, that I said any thing that came into my head to escape most quickly from M. Le Prefect.' The publication of such passages as these, so kindled the enthusiasm of French gallantry in her favour, that she has concluded a bargain with a bookseller for the copyright of a volume formed of the tender and complimentary letters which she received during the course of the affair. Neither by the members of the French Academy who write in the Minerve, nor by any one editor of any French journal, we believe, was a word said calculated to lead this infatuated woman to shame and penitence, and to spare their country the disgrace of having its magistrates and its public thus

made the sport of her falsehoods, in the serious matter of a trial for murder.

During the course of the night which followed this examination she began to think that what she had said might be attended with bad consequences.' She accordingly wrote two more letters to the prefect. In the first of these she says, 'in you alone I put all my confidence;' but tells him nothing, because she feels it to be impossible to connect two ideas together:' in the second she makes stronger claims than ever on the admiration of the editors and poets. Abandon an unfortunate! overwhelm me with the weight of your anger!' One cannot imagine a correspondence of this nature going on between sir Nathaniel Conant, and a female witness who had seen an assassination committed in a brothel. She hints to the prefect that her confession is false; but that if he bids her sustain it, she will do so at all perils of her life.

At the next interview with the magistrate, she agrees that she was in the house: soon afterwards, her confessor having told her, what she had not before thought of, that she implicated the woman Bancal by saying that she had seen a murder committed in her apartment, she retracts all again, and writes to the prefect, complaining against the malignity of the public;' accounts for her false deposition, by saying she had lost her head,' that her energy had been subdued for a moment, but that she will recover it again.

Again' reflecting on her situation,' she continued the correspondence. She begged the prefect not to imagine that it was her design to amuse him by false tales. Could you suppose me capable of such wickedness?' she asks. She requests the magistrate to prove to her that virtue exists in the nineteenth century-and hopes that he will burn her letters!

The judges arrive in the town; still more letters to the prefect: she informs him that should one being show himself interested in her fate, she might yet love life; that her heart is ulcerated; that she has not studied Machiavel. The public prosecutor (le Procureur General du Roi) received a visit from her; he told her that her fine voice was well known at Montpelier, and then spoke of the murder. From the public prosecutor she passed to the chief judge, who was to preside at the trial the next morning. Our readers will be astonished to hear that he received her, and conversed with her on the cause! The other judges came into the room; the president did the hononrs of his apartment with more politeness than lord Ellenborough would probably have shown in such circumstances, introducing Madame Manson to his brethren. He observed to them that Madame was in such a state of irritation, that she was resolved to force M. Clemendot, the pistol at his breast, to speak the truth, and that she would blow his brains out if he resisted!' She declares in her Memoirs, that she made a great impression on the bench at this private interview. She again writes to her old correspondent, the prefect, to say, that she 'had seen in his eyes all the excess of his sensibility!

When the trial came on, she resolved in good earnest to shoot M. Clemendot: full of this design, she called a young milliner from the street, bade her step to Madame Pons, and ask for a loaded pistol. This lady flatly refused what I demanded; but rage passed away, and religion and reason returned! She wrote to her father that the great blow should be struck; that the tribunal would be astonished; that the wretches should perish!

Introduced into court as a witness, the president made her a speech, in the course of which he told her that she was an angel destined by providence to clear up a horrible mystery. She was invited to tell all she knew of the assassination; on which, says the reporter, she darted a terrible look at the accused, and fainted away. A marechal-de-camp and others, fly to her help. Recovering, she cried out, remove from my sight these assassins!' She then deposed that she knew of no assassins, and that she had never been at Bancal's:-she added, that she believed Bastide and Jaussion were there.' 'Why do you believe so?' In consequence of anonymous notes I have received.-'Since you say you know nothing yourself against these men, why did you call them assassins? By conjecture: besides (turning to Jaussion) when one kills one's children, one may kill one's friend.' The chief judge enters with much eager curiosity into the story about killing children; and a good deal of loose talk takes place on this subject between him and his visiter of the evening before, all in the hearing of the jury. Being still further pressed, Madame Manson again fainted away-but this time she kept her seat. On her recovery, she put her hand on the sword of an officer, who was administering the remedies proper in such cases, and exclaimed, ‘you have got a knife!' The officer removed his sword that she might not be alarmed by its sight.

M. Fauldès, the son of the murdered person, is busy in court during the whole proceedings; he is indulged with permission to make speeches as often and as long as he pleases, and on any subject that may occur at the moment. The public prosecutor and another lawyer are employed against the prisoners, but that appears to be no reason why M. Fauldès should not also take possession of the court at his pleasure. The best possible understanding seems to have existed between him and the judges; he abused Bastide's advocate in outrageous terms, often interrupted the prisoners in their defence, and favoured the audience with long accounts of his mode of living at Paris, what company he kept, and what were his motives and feelings in pursuing the assassins of his father. Nothing could equal the nobleness of his conduct, say the reporters; and the audience never failed to dissolve in tears whenever he opened his mouth. When the accused persons take the undue liberty of cross-questioning him, the court murmurs disapprobation! The display of grief made by M. Fauldès, is scarcely less theatrical than Madame Manson's horrors; but what is most offensively ridiculous, is his intolerance and impatience, which perpetually goad him to interrupt the debates. The advo

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cate for Jaussion having objected to the testimony of a domestic belonging to the family of the murdered man, that his statement before the court went much further than his deposition before the judge of instruction, M. Fauldès gets up without ceremony, and informs the court, that his servant ought to be easily excused for the omission, inasmuch as he himself could scarcely, at first, bring himself to believe in the guilt of Jaussion (then on his trial). 'I was in my bed,' said M. Fauldès, when at the approach of that person I felt an indescribable horror, so much so, that I shrunk beneath the clothes to avoid his sight. It was then, as if by inspiration, I felt convinced he had been the principal instigator of the murder of my father!' All this goes without a word of caution from any body to the jury. M. Fauldes, as attentive to the inspirations of others as to his own, requested the court to order a file of armed men to be placed between the prisoners and Madame Manson, that she might feel reassured; this arrangement of the scenery took place, and had a striking effect. Madame Manson played her part still more interestingly; she assured M. Fauldès, with whom she carried on the dialogue, that to discover the assassins of his father, she would give all she had-All,' she added with a sigh, but my son!'

Is it not strange, is it not most lamentable, that there should not be found one person in France to point out how unworthy all this miserable mummery is of a court of justice, to indicate the folly and the enormity of permitting melo-dramatic scenes of mocksensibility to be acted before a jury assembled to try men on life or death: to show the judgment seat is degraded, and the moral principle that can alone sustain its dignity, injured, when a judge declares to a witness, in the situation of Madame Manson, that she is an angel commissioned from heaven to reveal the truth! Is it not fearful that it should not strike one Frenchman to maintain, that life and character can only be safe in a country where justice takes a calm, dry, and deliberate course in pursuing its investigations, limiting its proceedings to the establishment of absolute facts, and carefully excluding from access into the tribunal, not only the heated imaginations of individuals, but also those natural emotions, which, if honourable to friends and relations, lose their respectability when paraded in public, and which ought never to be permitted to disturb the gravity of an official inquiry. That the multitude should be rash, violent, and prejudiced, with reference to an enormous crime, is not to their discredit; but here are judges and lawyers, substituting heroics in the place of deliberation, and, instead of opposing the necessary checks to tumultuous precipitation and mistake, as their stations call upon them to do, joining the general extravagance, as if fearful to lose their share of the eclat! Is it illiberal to suggest in what a very different and how much more respectable a manner, such an affair would have been conducted in this country? A woman of the character of Madame Manson might have been permitted to amuse the public in matters of a less tremendous character than an assassination; our people may be fooled to the top of their bent' in many

things; but luckily we do not so terribly confound what ought to be kept immeasurably separate. When a certain barrier is passed, the public mind in this country returns to seriousness and reflection; and those whose peculiar duty it is to give the signal when trifling ought to cease, have not yet been found to be totally regardless of that sacred charge.

The astonishment of our readers will be increased when they find the chief judge exclaiming, in the middle of the trial, to the two prisoners, Bastide and Jaussion,- You certainly were in Bancal's house; TELL US which of you saved the life of a female?' To the woman Bancal he said, 'you know you are guilty;' and then exhorted her to look at the figure of Christ, suspended over his head, and no longer conceal the truth! After this, it is scarcely necessary to observe, that the humane and just rule of our law, that no prisoner can be called upon to criminate himself, has no place in French theory or practice. On the contrary if the accused do not criminate themselves by avowals, the judges tell them that they have done so sufficiently by their silence or their denials. Questions of the most indecent and apalling nature are put from the bench to the accused, in a tone of severity, and often of sarcasm, which would scarcely be permitted to advocates in England (free as they are in this respect) towards an unconcerned witness. The judges cover the prisoners on their trials with reproaches; charge them with falsehoods; enter into contestations with them; declare that they are caught before the jury, and so forth. In England, the judge is held to be officially counsel for the accused; in France, he appears to be his natural and inveterate enemy. Independently of the inhumanity of this practice, it is necessarily fatal to that solemnity and majesty which ought to mantle the judgment seat in the eyes of society.

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The president having again affirmed, by way of address to Bastide, that he was in the house of Bancal the night of the murder, Madame Manson suddenly exclaimed, avow wretch! This indecent interruption would have been severely rebuked with us,— but in France all hearts trembled,' says the reporter. She had just declared, be it remembered, that she knew nothing of the affair; yet there appears to have been no one in court, not even the counsel for the prisoners, to charge the jury, as they valued their consciences, to dismiss entirely from their attention the mountebank tricks of this infamous woman. A. M. Amans Rodat is then invited by the judge to state in court a sort of metaphysical lecture, which he delivered one day to Madame Manson, on the propriety of speaking the truth, when examined in a case affecting men's lives, and the punishment of murder. After several modest excuses, he commenced the repetition of his discourse, in which he told her, that, if a wicked world should judge of her by appearances,' (in consequence of her having been in a brothel) it would at the same time say, as has been said of our first mother, oh, happy fault! Go on! speak, sir!' said the president,' your words may serve for public instruction."