Then Lord Meadowbank came to the prisoner's visits to Mademoiselle le Normand--his having trafficked with her as far back as 1812, since which time he said, "she had been in the constant habit of advancing money to himself and his wife;" and yet her existence, even, was not known to his most intimate friends! Then he admits that he and his wife "desire her to institute a search for documents and charters to support his claims;" that he had never dreamed of searching _in France_ for documents illustrative of his own pedigree; and it was with the greatest surprise he afterwards learned that they had been discovered! Then Lord Meadowbank contrasted the prisoner's statements as to the paucity of his visits to this old lady with the evidence of one Beaubis, the porter at the hotel where she resided, and who stated that the prisoner "saw her _every night_." Infinitely more serious, however, were the conflicting answers given by the prisoner, as to the nature and amount of his pecuniary liabilities to Mademoiselle le Normand, which Lord Meadowbank pronounced to be "a mass of contradictions." At one time he stated that he had given her his bond for _four hundred thousand francs_!--then only two bonds for 100,000 francs each, sent by him to her in 1837!--"payable, palpably, on the event of his succeeding in his claims on the Earldom of Stirling. This," continued Lord Meadowbank, "perhaps affords a pretty good key for solving the mystery of the interest that this woman has taken in these productions!" Having adverted to various portions of this old lady's correspondence with the prisoner, which had been seized at his house--certainly containing matters pregnant with violent suspicion--Lord Meadowbank said, "These are the circumstances from which you are to infer, or not, the guilty knowledge of the panel, and of his being, or not, art and part in the forgery of these documents. Remember, it is not said or proved that he forged them with his own hand; the question is, whether he had a knowledge of the forgeries that were going on at Paris during his stay there.... You will judge whether his obligation to Mademoiselle le Normand for 400,000 or 200,000 francs was or was not given for the fabrication of that document. And in looking to that document itself, [_i. e._, the map with its indorsements,] you will see his statement as to _the seal_ on the back of it; and consider whether he be not thereby brought into immediate contact with the fabrication of that document, in consequence of the impression of the seal on its back, which he admits was in the possession of a member of his family." Lord Meadowbank proceeded to advert briefly to "the exculpatory evidence," and said that the fact of the fabricated excerpt charter having escaped the notice of the Lord Ordinary, and also of Mr Lockhart, was "no doubt a strong circumstance in favour of the prisoner," if that excerpt charter had been _the only_ case against him; but it was altogether