"Say no more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she _could_ not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those whom you would coin your heart to serve and bless! Ah, sir," he continued, whilst tears of agony streamed through his firmly-closed fingers, "you cannot conceive the unutterable bitterness of the pang which rends the heart of him who feels that he is not only despised, but loathed, hated, execrated, by her whom his soul idolizes! Mine was no boyish, transient passion: it has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength. My life has been but one long dream of her. All that my soul had drunk in of beauty in the visible earth and heavens--the light of setting suns--the radiance of the silver stars--the breath of summer flowers, together with all which we imagine of celestial purity and grace, seemed to me in her incarnated, concentrated, and combined! And now lost--lost--forever lost!" The violence of his emotions choked his utterance; and deeply and painfully affected, I hastened from his presence. Time sped as ever onwards, surely, silently; and justice, with her feet of lead, but hands of iron, closed gradually upon her quarry. Alfred Bourdon was arraigned before a jury of his countrymen, to answer finally to the accusation of wilful murder preferred against him.