To pass judgment on the prisoner, he said, it was incumbent on the jurors to know him, and to know him they must go back to what he came from. For it was the uncertain destiny of man, born in such and such a corner of the earth, of such and such a race, to follow a predestined course, and by his own force of will to work his way through to efficiency and his destined end. “You who come from lines of honest forefathers, and yourselves have founded families, must listen to this history of a family that I shall tell you, before you decide upon your verdict....” To the peasants from the plains and mountains, of whom the jury was composed, who, by nature and reflection, could not but be sensible to this actual human chronicle, the truthfulness and example of it striking true to their honest minds, he then told the long story of successive Roquevillards: the first ancestor of them all, who had laid the first stone of the old house, planting the roots of his tree of life in his native soil, the struggle of successive generations adding their efforts, one to another, clearing the ground by the sweat of their brows, showing their doggedness with the stubborn soil, or in the face of intemperate or hurtful seasons, the chance destruction of crops by hail or frost, their sobriety and content with a few things, their thrift, which, at the expense of their personal enjoyment, made provision for the future--a thrift at once disinterested and in itself an act of faith in the coming generations. Thus the beautiful estate of La Vigie, whose vines and woods and fields and orchards produced so abundantly, laughing in the sunlight, in the time of harvest, represented the economy and endurance of a whole race, straight as a line of tall and growing poplars. For land that is cultivated by man assumes a human face, and when we behold our properties we are gazing on the countenances of our ancestors. And yet to what end had all this collective labour of the Roquevillards been reduced? To-day their domain belonged to the plaintiff, their adversary, who had gotten it for nothing. Had the Roquevillards laboured for five hundred years to make this present to him? No, but with their patrimony which they had patiently and painfully built up they were ransoming this last Roquevillard of them all. Who, then, had been despoiled, and which was the thief? For one hundred thousand francs paid down Mr. Frasne was receiving, accepting, a property worth almost twice that sum. Who was getting rich, then? Who was being ruined? In the name of the dead who paid this ransom, the accused must be acquitted.