Such was the crime, and the _Old Yellow Book_ is the record of the legal battle over the assassins, which was fought through the criminal courts of Rome, presided over by Vice-governor Venturini. The prosecution and defence alike were conducted by officers of the court, two lawyers on each side, the Procurator and Advocate of the Poor for the defendants, and the Procurator and Advocate of the Fisc against them. As the fact of the crime was definitely ascertained, the legal battle turned entirely on the justification or condemnation of the motive of the crime. The defence maintained that the assassination had been for honour's sake, and the unwritten law, to which appeal is made in generation after generation, was urged at every point. That Guido had suffered unspeakable ignominy cannot be denied; that his wife had been untrue to him even in the perilous flight with Caponsacchi is unproved, as the courts had evidently held in the Process of Flight. The prosecution, on the other hand, reiterated in every argument their reading of Guido's motive--greed. Greed had led him to marry Pompilia. Greed had occasioned his disgraceful wranglings with the Comparini. Defeated greed had made him torture his wife into scandalous flight, and calculating greed had led him to commit the murder at a time and in a manner to save the whole property to himself. Still further, said the prosecution, not only was his motive bad, but the crime was committed in a way which involved him in half a dozen accessory crimes, each of them capital. Such is the drift of the argument, which is fortified at every point by citation of precedent from the legal procedure of all ages. Altogether it is a highly skilled legal battle according to the technical limitations of the game, while the simple appeals to equity and to common human feeling hardly enter at all.