perhaps in his time it was centuries old. There stands the very oak under which famed Robin Hood presided when the royal deer were cut up and distributed. There, too, is the Parliament oak, in which he held his meetings, with the green oak of the valley, in whose towering and branched trunk the bold outlaw met his merry company. In the New Forest, a stone points out where, until a hundred years ago,

the oak tree stood, beneath whose branches William Rufus fell by Tyrrell's hand. Thus, the old trees of England call to mind memorable scenes and personages. What protected these oaks? The spirit of reverence for law and self-respect. This it is which watches over and preserves her relics, monuments, and trees. The Clove, May, 1865.

JUSTIFIABLE OR UNJUSTIFIABLE?

In the middle of the night of the 26th February, 1807, two men knocked up the household of the "juge de paix," of the town of La Force, in the department of Dordogne, in France. They came to beg the provincial functionary to take immediate cognisance of an alleged act of manslaughter, committed that very night at Meynard, the neighbouring chateau of one M. Jean Jacques Ponterie-Escot, Member of the Corps Legislatif in the year IV.

The "juge de paix" refused to take cognisance of anything at so unseemly an hour, but promised to give the matter his attention in the morning. Early on the 27th February, accompanied by a surgeon named Valencie, he arrived at Meynard, and discovered that nobody was dead.

But in the bedroom of Mademoiselle Cécile Ponterie-Escot was a young man, half naked, raving and delirious, his hands and his feet tied, and bound to the wood-work of the bed by a cloth passed round his body. A pistol was lying on a second bed. But though the young man was suffering from some injury, it was not the result of a pistol wound. The surgeon observed that his throat was marked with such black bruises as might have been made by a thumb and fingers. In the afternoon he was considered able to be removed, and was conveyed to an auberge at La Force. There he lingered only a few hours, and died on the night of February 28th.

There was no question as to his identity. He was recognized at once as M. Hilaire Dehap, a young man of fair position and good looks, residing with his parents at Bergerac. Many of his friends and acquaintances knew that he was not insensible to the youthful graces of Mademoiselle Ponterie-Escot, and opined that between him and that young lady there had existed an intimacy which, if clandestine, was close. How then did he come by his death?

In the year 1807 there were many circles of society where great laxity of morals was condoned

if not encouraged. Dehap, it would seem belonged to one of these, and his friends spread their accounts of his decease accordingly. M. Ponterie-Escot was rich, and of accredited rank in the world. He refused to entertain for a moment the proposals of marriage which had been made to him by the family Dehap. He forbade all intercourse between Hilaire Dehap and his daughter Cécile. But parents cannot always control the loves of their children. Mademoiselle Cécile did not share or give in to the feelings of her father. She corresponded with Hilaire Dehap. She met Hilaire Dehap. She set at defiance the injunctions of her family and the old-world notions of family life. M. Ponterie-Escot was naturally enraged. His sons participated in his anger. They were determined enticed him into their own grounds by a forged to be revenged on Hilaire Dehap. So they letter purporting to come from his mistress, and then compassed his death. What was he? An ardent lover, following the fresh instincts of nature, and sworn to risk everything in the cause of love. What were they? The exponents of the feelings of an age gone by-gloomy characters, who would fetter youth and passion by the bonds of duty and religion-murderers deserving the execration of their fellows, and the last penalties of the law.

This was the account given of the matter by the friends of Dehap; and these, it seems, formed the majority of the neighbouring population. The Ponterie-Escot side of the story was very different. A year before the catastrophe they had gone to pass the winter months at Bergerac. Then Mademoiselle Cécile had been introduced to Monsieur Hilaire Dehap. She was just seventeen, pretty, pleasant, and the probable inheritrix of a considerable fortune. He was a handsome, pleasant fellow; but good for nothing, and not worth a sou. made any proposals of marriage at all. He paid marked attention; but, whatever might be Cécile's sentiments, her father peremptorily forbade any intimacy. Cécile was sent to stay at a place called Gillet, with a sister who was married

He never

and brothers played in the dining-room till halfpast two. Her brother went first to bed, traversing the saloon, and so reaching his room by a door opposite to that of Cécile's. Madame Ponterie-Escot then bethought her that she had need of some linen stored in a press in Cécile's room. She went to the door, but found it, contrary to custom, locked within. "Cécile," she exclaimed, "let me in." "Yes, mamma!" said Cécile, but did not obey immediately. In a few seconds the door was unlocked and the mother started back in dismay on seeing a man's head, the head of Dehap, appearing through the curtains of one of the beds. Cécile was stand

to a doctor. Dehap did not visit at the house; but he established himself in the neighbourhood, and soon found means of continuing his love passages with the young heiress. There was a wood behind the doctor's house, and to this wood Cécile was summoned by the report of a gun. Debap had not the good feeling to keep his proceedings a secret. Ere long there was a "scandale." Cécile was brought home in disgrace. She pleaded in excuse, that she hoped that when her father saw the steadfastness of the love on both sides, he would consent to the proposed marriage. Dehap had told her that he had prayed in vain to be admitted to her presence as a recognized suitor. Her fathering in the middle of the room. Madame Ponteriedeclared that there had been no proposed marriage at all. At the dictation of her relatives she wrote a letter to Dehap, finally repudiating him; and, at the dictation of her private feelings, another, in which she protested that the first had been extorted from her against her will. The two letters were despatched at the same time. The interrupted correspondence was soon renewed. The father and mother of the young Dehap, said the Ponterie-Escots, abetted their son in his infamous proceedings. Cécile too was not without a confidant in the household at ❘ Meynard. One Jean Faure, a kind of Softy, carried her letters to her lover. At one time he had been caught in the act, reprimanded, and warned. But he lacked either the wit or the integrity to obey the orders of his master, and the transfer of letters continued. Although Cécile was kept a close prisoner at Meynard, many in the neighbourhood knew that her prison was not wholly impervious to her pretended lover. Her own near relatives were the persons who suspected least that all their precautions had been taken in vain.

Such was the state of affairs, when, at the beginning of the year 1807 (it must be remembered that we are repeating the account of the Ponterie-Escot family) – Cécile began to exhibit a morbid dislike to her younger sister, Mademoiselle Eugénie. She quarrelled with her incessantly. She made it impossible that they should live peaceably together. So their mother came to the conclusion that it would not be well for the two sisters to continue to inhabit the same bed-chamber.

The principal rooms at Meynard were on the ground-floor. The saloon looked out on the garden, and communicated with the room occupied by Mademoiselle Cécile. This bedroom was only separated from that of the master and mistress of the house by a wooden partition. It was lighted by two windows, one opening on the garden, the other on a roadway, the latter raised some four mètres from the lane. It contained two beds. The garden was shut in by a wall, in which there was a gate. At the other side of the wall was a wood of elms.

Escot gave a loud shriek. Her husband and her children rushed into the room. The man on the bed snatched up a pistol from the second bed, and pointing it at the intruders said, "Eh bien!" The infuriated father (so said the Meynard family) sprang on him-knocked up his pistol arm, and seized his throat with a grasp of fierce strength. The sons, running in halfundressed, wrenched the pistol from the weakened grasp of Dehap. In a moment, so vigorous was the attack of the elder Ponterie-Escot, his victim gave a hoarse rattle and fell to the ground insensible. The details of the scene of horror and confusion can easily be supplied. The main points to notice are, of course, the alleged surprise of Dehap in the bed-room; and the menace with the pointed pistol. No sooner had Dehap fallen-apparently a corpse-than his slayer despatched the younger Ponterie-Escot and Jean Faure, the half-witted servant, to inform the authorities at La Force. But no sooner were they out of the house than it was discovered that Dehap was not yet dead, but had swooned. Ponterie-Escot placed him on the bed, sent for two men-servants, ordered him to be clothed in the garments which were lying about the room, and to be carefully watched. During the night the messengers to La Force returned with the news that the judge would not come till day. Then M. Ponterie-Escot wrote off letters to the family of the wounded man, apprising them of the event, and requesting that a competent surgeon might be sent without delay. As his strength revived, Dehap became more and more unmanageable. Then it was that his keepers found it necessary to bind his hands and feet, and to tie him to the bed. So he was found when the juge de paix arrived in the morning.

Seen in this light, the story makes the slayer the victim and the object of pity. Such was by no means the opinion of the mass of the community.

There was an examination of the corpse. The surgeons employed stated that there were four bruises on the neck-one on the right side, two on the left, one in the middle. One only out of the five members of the faculty dissented from the conclusion that the wounds were the print of one hand. All agreed that the bandages and cords used to confine the struggling man had done him no serious injury. All agreed, too, that certain mutilations which some imaginative

persons who may possibly have read the tale of Abelard" declared they had seen, existed only in the fancies of the fanciful. The magistrates decided that death had resulted from "interruption of respiration and circulation caused by long and severe compression of the neck." Public opinion was almost unanimously in favour of the Dehaps. And whether it was well or ill founded, it displayed itself with very great violence and impropriety. When the body of the unhappy young man was conveyed to the grave, it was followed by a vast crowd of those who were most excited concerning the manner of his death, invoking vengeance on the "murderers," and making altogether a very unseemly demonstration. It is even stated in the records of the event that a butcher fresh from the abattoir was brought to smear the door of the Ponterie-Escots town residence at Bergerac with blood, and that while the crowd shrieked applause, "Maison des Bouveaux" was inscribed on the house-front. The feeling of the more moderate of the Dehap faction was expressed in such statements as the following, extracted from a newspaper of the day:

An attempt was made to induce her to sign a paper, asking the intervention of the magistrates to protect her from the surveillance of her family. It became necessary to post a guard of gendarmes at Meynard in order to secure the unfortunate family from outrage. A strange state of society! Obviously the order of the new empire had not yet altogether taken the place of the lawlessness of the Revolution. Once let it be established that every man may do what is right in his own eyes, and it is the work of many years to restore law and restraint.

In the ordinary course of events, the accused would have been brought to trial before the "Cour d'Assises" of la Dordogne. But it was clear that in the near neighbourhood of the scene of the event in question, it would be next to impossible for the case to have a fair hearing. The Ponterie-Escots were advised to petition the then Court of Cassation that the case should come on at Bordeaux, and were successful in their appeal. There it was not likely that their interests would be compromised by a prejudiced tribunal; and there they were brought to a fairer bar than that of the mob, on the 24th August, 1807. The indictment was not confined to the father and son. The whole family of Ponterie-Escot were arraigned on a charge of murder.

"A young man named Dehap, son of a gentleman, formerly a magistrate, and now an octogenarian, paid his addresses to a daughter of M. Ponterie-Escot, ex-member of one of our For several days all that the world heard of deliberatic assemblies. The parties were ill was the prosecution. The points on which matched in point of fortune; and the father of most stress was laid would seem to be the letter the lady refused his consent, forbidding all said to have been written by Cécile on the morn. hope for the future. As the young lady wasing of the catastrophe, and opened and examined approaching her majority, she deemed that she | might keep faith with her lover, and afford him opportunities of seeing her. These interviews, however, never gave cause for any stain on her reputation. On Thursday, February 26th, the young Dehap received a letter from Mademoiselle Ponterie-Escot, then in the country. She invited him to visit her that evening. Although this letter had evidently been opened and resealed, M. Dehap was punctual at the appointed time and place. In the morning he was found by the juge de paix, dead, laid on a mattress, his hands tied behind his back, his face downwards. The father of the girl had disappeared; but the police are on his track. The whole population of Bergerac took part in the funeral procession of Dehap." Many days had not gone by, before a crowd collected in one of the squares of Bergerac, threatening to march to Meynard, and set it on fire. The Ponterie-Escots were warned that it was intended to attack their house in the night. They were in a difficulty; for though a warrant for their apprehension had been issued, the authorities of the neighbourhood were unwilling to run the risk of the attempt to convey them to the gaol at Bergerac. Lynch-law was feared. Ponterie-Escot and his son contrived to effect their escape from their menaced home, and then it was invaded by an extraordinary influx of the friends of Dehap. A number of young men, it is related, went in the name of the parents of the dead man, and demanded Cécile from her mother, contending that her own natural protectors had forfeited all rights to control her.

by her family; and some rents in the clothes of Dehap, supposed to indicate a struggle_while they were yet worn-these clothes the Dehap family were unable to produce. The conclusion which the prosecution sought to establish was that Dehap was the victim of a "guet-à-pens" that he had been enticed on to the Meynard premises by the bait of an interview with his mistress, and then strangled. There was clearly homicide; and, said the prosecution, not justifiable homicide. Indeed the procureur-général did not hesitate to employ, and to insist on the term, assassination. It was not till the 29th day of the month that the council for the PonterieEscot family began their defence. They had chosen for their advocate a Monsieur Dennée, who had made his début, and been received in the parliament of Bordeaux, as early as 1782. Like many others, he had suffered from the interruption which the Revolution caused to the exercise of his profession. He began to practise once more when the Empire gave promise of stability and order, and died a procureur du roi in 1820. He enjoyed a considerable reputation, founded in a great measure on his conduct of the Ponterie-Escot defence. His speech on that occasion is, in itself, not the least note-worthy feature of a very singular case, and no mean specimen of the forensic eloquence of the country of Berryer.

The procureur-général having stated that the accused were arraigned for " an attack on personal freedom and individual security" (it is not easy to perceive how detention of the person

could be an aggravation of murder), Maître | from the error that has misled you. Mark that not Dennée began by congratulating himself and his only is there not the smallest foundation of proof, clients on the starting of this notion. "You but that the unhappy Cécile herself, in the have told us yourselves," he said, "how much absence of her father, free from all suspicion of confidence you put in your principal point. You restraint, has declared to the interrogating feel that it will not touch the accused, and it is magistrate, that at that time she had ceased to something to find at the very beginning a correspond with Dehap; that she had not justification suggested by the officer charged with written to him since Christmas. But, it is the prosecution." Having given a vivid recital urged, if she did not write, she sent messages of the discovery and death of the deceased, by Faure the servant. It has been extracted according to the version of his clients, Dennée from this witness, with some difficulty, that continued: "It is only too true that a man has he was the go-between-that he did convey been killed, and the accused is the first to acknow- messages. But his endeavour to deny this to ledge that death was the result of his violent the court, shows that he had denied it to his action. But law, in accordance with reason, master. He was afraid to confess his fault in recognizes the possibility of homicide without the face of the severe threats held out against crime. The ordinary rule, one of the few with him by the Sieur Ponterie in case of such a out an exception, is that there can be no crime dereliction of his duty. One fact will prove without intent; this the law lays down distinctly, clearly enough that Faure carried on the corresand so requires, that in the case of every accusa-pondence without the knowledge of his master. tion preferred before a jury, the question of You remember that Cécile, to recover the letters intent should be argued. So the law denies of Dehap, wrote one at the dictation of her that there is crime in a homicide committed father: you remember that she wrote a second involuntarily; or in homicide committed in self-in pencil, to show that the first was not her free defence, or in defence of another. In these cases the homicide, so far from incurring a penalty, is declared justifiable (légitime). Homicide becomes an atrocity when it is committed with premeditation. Then it is termed murder. In this case alone is it punishable with death. It is in this last category that it is attempted to rank the deed of the Sieur Ponterie. It is maintained that Dehap was not surprised in the chamber of Cécile. It is maintained that the Sieur Ponterie, forewarned of Dehap's visit, waylaid him in the shrubbery of the garden, assailed him there, and then led, dragged, or carried him to the chamber of his daughter, in order to convict him of an outrage which he had not attempted. And what are the proofs brought forward to support this hypothesis? None, absolutely none. It rests on certain suppositions which we shall proceed to examine presently, on certain alleged improbabilities in the story of Dehap's allowing himself to be surprised in the bedroom. Of the pretended letter, intercepted by Cécile's father, no witness has been found to establish even the existence. There is not the slightest ground for supposing that it was either written or sent; and yet it is persistently quoted, on the authority of the letter in the Journal de l'Empire.' Unhappy old man! (he addresses the elder Dehap) it is impossible that you should have penned a libel so foully calumnious! its flowery phrases could never have been written by a heart-broken father. Let me believe that you gave your signature without reflection-that, overwhelmed by your grief, you were made the victim of some dishonest hand: I will not believe that you could stain your last days by an imposture contrived to found on an imaginary murder the horrible hope of a judicial murder. And you, who have believed in the existence of this letter of Cécile's, intercepted, opened, resealed by her father-you who have been thus convinced of premeditation on the part of the accused-return

act. These two letters were sent together, and by the hands of Faure. Now it is plain that the Sieur Ponterie, endeavouring to break off all correspondence, was very far from knowing anything of this second letter. It is obvious that the servant must have carried on the correspondence without the privity of the head of the family. Everything tends to disprove the possibility of the Sieur Ponterie's knowing anything about the continuance of the correspondence between his daughter and the deceased. But the notion of premeditation is strengthened by the condition of the torn clothes; contradicting, we are told, the statement of Dehap being discovered in bed. There are considerable discrepancies in the evidence on this point. Some say the clothes were in one state, some in another. The Sieur Vignac alone noticed the inside of the waistcoat torn, and the collar unsewed. He, the close friend of the deceased, and Tavaux, another warm partizan of the Dehap family, are the only authorities for the overcoat being "new" or "nearly new." The first witnesses, among them the juge de paix, declared it to be considerably worn. But after all, of what import is the state in which the clothes were found in the house of Chignac (whither the deceased had been carried from Meynard)? Might they not have been torn there, whether wilfully or by chance? Might not these rents have been made in the transit from Meynard to La Force-in laying the deceased in the cart-in taking him out-in depositing him in the house-in dressing him-in undressing him? The only point worth consideration is the condition in which the clothes were found at Meynard. There everything was examined, because the injured man was dressed bit by bit: there no rent was found in the waistcoat only the shoulder of the shirt, and the tail of the coat, were torn. Is it then true, as we are told, that these tears are necessarily connected with a struggle in the garden? Dehap walking in the night through hedges

contingencies of a crime? And if it was a folly on the part of the first to leave his clothes in careless disorder, would the second have been so foolish as not to dispose them in the manner most likely to suggest a corroboration of his own story? But, it is urged again, the window was open; Dehap, instead of disclosing himself to Madame Ponterie, might have so escaped; he could not have left it open but with that intention. I reply, Dehap was undressed, even to his stockings. Surprised in such a state it is easy to

and ditches, climbing walls, and pushing through trees, they might well tear his coat and these tears point to murder! What reasonable man could draw such an inference? And observe, gentlemen, that Dehap received no wound in any part of his body corresponding with the alleged rents. No wound or contusion was found in the back part of his body. And since these tears were to be put in evidence against my clients, what has become of the clothes? They have disappeared. And it is hardly likely that they would have been mislaid through careless-imagine that he could not run away. His unness. Why are they not forthcoming? It is the relatives and the friends of Dehap who have made away with them. You may be sure, sirs, that if they could have been used to advantage against the accused, they would not have gone down with their wearer to the grave. Another ground for the argument of the prosecution is the fact that Dehap's hat was found rubbed. What! an ill-brushed hat is to prove the murder of its owner! There is no question of any wound in the head and it was not till it had been all night in the room that it was found by the juge de paix on February 27. But after it had left the head of Dehap, might it not have been in many hands? Is it not probable that in the confusion of that awful night it was picked up and handled and dropped? Yes, it dropped in that room, and nowhere else. We have an irresistible proof. It has been testified that the hat was stained by dust-a significant circumstance. That dust proves that it was dropped in the room. Had Dehap been assaulted in the garden, the hat falling in soft soil on a rainy night would have shown marks not of dust, but of mud. I have shown improbabilities in the theory of the prosecution. But it is urged that the statements of the accused are improbable. Is it probable, we are asked, that a rash villain should have dared to introduce himself, at an hour when the family were still awake, into a room adjoining the saloon, where the least noise could be heard? It was precisely the time when the attempt could be made with least danger. Once let the father and mother have retired to rest, and it would have been impossible. Their room is separated from that of Cécile only by a thin partition. A little later, and the house would have been wrapt in profound silence, when every noise would have been audible. There was not so much to fear while the family were playing and talking in the saloon. It was then easy not to be heard. Neither time nor place, then, is improbable. But is it likely, it is continued, that Dehap would have left his clothes scattered all over the room, his boots between the two beds, his coat in one place, his watch and hat in another? Ah, sirs! had the wretched man been gifted with prudence it would not have been only how to place his clothes that he would have thought-rather how to avoid a quarrel-how to rein an immoderate passion. And why should more foresight and reflection be expected in a young libertine, burning to satisfy his desires, than in a cold-blooded assassin calculating the

happy accomplice, having once replied to her mother, might think that there was more danger in disobeying than in not keeping her waiting; and, as Cécile said, on her examination, they had both lost their heads. But we are authorised in supposing that another idea, audacious no doubt, but still not less extraordinary, may have struck the infatuated young man. The witness Meslon, whom all parties seem to acknowledge to be unimpeachable, deposes that, after the departure of Sieur Ponterie for La Force, he asked to see Cécile Ponterie, his niece. He found her lying down, and, having upbraided her for what she had done, asked her why, before she opened the door to her mother, she had not dimissed Dehap by the way he had come. She replied: 'I tried to get him to do so, but he refused;' adding, 'Who could have thought that this would happen?' On being asked if he had been often, she answered: Only too often!' Note these words with care, gentlemen of the jury: they will give you a key to the sudden idea formed in the young man's brain. He is not the first who has wished to be surprised in such circumstances as would force consent to his wishes. And it would be vain to object that the window, left open for flight, is inconsistent with this hypothesis. The idea was very probably the thought of a moment. At all events the open window militates strongly against the notion that Dehap was assaulted in the garden and then conveyed to Cécile's room. If it was so-if Dehap did not come himself into Cécile's room; if vile assassins dragged him thither, the simplest road for them to have taken would have been by the door, through the saloon, and so into Cécile's bedroom. But, then, why should they have opened the window? Can you see the least use in their so doing? Once in the room, so far from opening the window, would they not carefully have shut it, in order to finish their work in secret? If, on the other hand, they threw or dragged him in by the window-although I can see no motive in a master's preferring the window of his house to the door-there would still have been the same probability that their first care would have been to have shut it after them. But, if by inconceivable inadvertence they had neglected to shut it, if by that negligence they feared discovery, at least they would be careful not to reveal a fact likely to tell against themselves; and yet we have no evidence for the window being open except the declaration of the accused themselves. So the circum