He, the Most Worshipful the Lord Mayor, the observed of all observers in the City as elsewhere, or in any assemblage he adorned with his presence and ornamented with his personality, had been accused in an offensive phrase of "imbibing too freely of the Devil's cup," the Devil's cup in this instance signifying wine, the insidious inference being that the Most Worshipful the Mayor was inebriated, and, moreover, in public, and in Trafalgar Square of all places in London. The Counsel paused dramatically, then a thrill of unutterable horror crept into the hitherto purring voice of Mr. Gentle Gammon. "That, my Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury, is a foul calumny, an insidious lie, uttered to drag down the exalted of the earth, and bespatter the resplendent robes of Civic dignity with the spiteful mud besprinkled from the nethermost garbaged recesses of the journalistic gutter. "During the still and beautiful night hours, when this travesty of an accusation is brought, my client, the Most Worshipful, had wandered into the holy star-lit night, clad in the flowing robes symbolical of his exalted earthly estate, to place a wreath, a beautiful wreath, upon one of the monuments of London he deemed the most dignified and fitting to receive it. That monument, if they but lifted their eyes, they would see in Court. A stately noble Lion, whose presence there had necessitated the removal of four separate sets of folding doors leading to the Court in order that it might be present. Could this noble beast but speak," urged Mr. Gentle Gammon, K.C., "could it even roar, it would speak its severest censures, would roar its loudest denunciations at the libellous statement that the noble Civic head of London who honoured it, could possibly have done so, could conceivably have climbed to such a height upon its back, unless he had been eminently sober, unfalteringly steady at the time when, clad in his robes in the calm violet depth of night, he had placed his offering in happy felicitation as a symbol and a greeting to his beloved City of London. This should have excited only admiration; but seen through the prying eyes of a prurient pressman, this touching tribute had been changed by the vile alchemy of suspicion to an unseemly and ridiculous action of midnight debauchery which could only have turned the noble Lion to stone, had it not already been made of bronze.