‘Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named Louis Rey. Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a regiment--a school, gentleman, where much besides bravery, alas! is taught; nay, where the spirit which familiarises one with notions of battle and death, I fear, may familiarise one with ideas, too, of murder. Rey, a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had lately entered Peytel’s service; was treated by him with the most singular kindness; accompanied him (having charge of another vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and _knew that his master carried with him a considerable sum of money_; for a man like Rey an enormous sum, 7500 francs. At midnight on the 1st of November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an attack was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the hour at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier _is within a league of the spot_ where the desperate deed was done.’ Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but the suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a similar florid account of the prisoner’s case? Instead of this, you will remark, that it is the advocate’s endeavour to make Peytel’s statements as uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in the following way:-- ‘Scarcely was Peytel’s statement known, but the common sense of the public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the bridge of Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd November he had developed it in detail, in the presence of the physicians, in the presence of the assembled neighbours--of the persons who, on the day previous only, were his friends. Finally, he had completed it in his interrogatories, his conversations, his writings, and letters to the magistrates; and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful incredulity. The fact was, that, besides the singular character which Peytel’s appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to believe it.’ Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel’s statement is discredited _everywhere_; the statement which he had made over the cold body of his wife--the monster! It is not enough simply to prove that the man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry against him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes the horrid details of the crime.