I had seen many murderers sentenced to death from that very dock, and was often puzzled at the geography of the place; all this, however, was now made perfectly clear. It was with mingled feelings of astonishment and bewilderment that I found myself, suddenly and without warning, the observed of all observers. The crowded Court, the forest of well-known faces—vindictive prosecutors, reluctant witnesses, quasi-friends come to gloat over my misfortune, and one or two real sympathisers—all appeared glued together to my bewildered gaze. Beyond, and seated against the wall, were innumerable figures robed in flowing scarlet gowns, and presenting to my senses so ghastly and weird a picture that I can compare it to nothing but that impressive trial scene in “The Bells,” to which Mr. Irving imparts such terrible reality. It only required the mesmerist to complete the resemblance; and he must have been there, although invisible, for I was mesmerized, or at least completely dazed. By degrees, however, I recovered my senses, and embracing the whole scene, summed up the vanity of human sympathy and the value to be attached to friendship, as it is called. Reader, whoever you are, take the word of a man who has been rich and surrounded by every luxury. Friends will cluster round you in your prosperity as they did round me, and when they have eaten you out of house and home, and robbed you by fair means or foul, by card playing and racing, you must not be surprised if you discover that the most vindictive and uncompromising are those you least expected. “For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it—neither was it he that hated me, that did magnify himself against me; but it was a man, mine equal, my guide, and my acquaintance—yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread—hath lifted up his heel against me.”