Our friend, the Procureur’s Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner’s narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:-- ‘Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss has plunged her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness. Some early differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of their union; but these,--which, as can be proved by evidence, were almost all the unhappy lady’s fault,--had happily ceased, to give place to sentiments far more delightful and tender. Gentlemen, Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of future concord between herself and her husband: in three brief months she was to become a mother. ‘In the exercise of his honourable profession,--in which, to succeed, a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted probity,--and, gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel _did_ succeed--_did_ inspire respect and confidence, as you, his neighbours, well know;--in the exercise, I say, of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the end of October last, had occasion to make a journey in the neighbourhood, and visit some of his many clients. ‘He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does this look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of love--of love and paternal care on his part towards the being with whom his lot in life was linked,--the mother of his coming child,--the young girl, who had everything to gain from the union with a man of his attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his great experience, and his high position? In this manner they travelled, side by side, lovingly together. Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer merely; but a man of letters and varied learning; of the noble and sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent devotee.’ (Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the conversations which Peytel, a religious man,[8] might have with his young wife upon the subject.)