running from Versailles to Paris. He seemed to be in a joyous frame of mind, and rubbed his hands with an air of satisfaction, as if he had just completed a most excellent bargain. As the coach rolled along, he hummed an air from the latest opera, —
"Si Zerbin était roi, Zerbine serait reine."
Who was this man, — Du Coudray at Paris, Beaupré at Versailles? What secrets did his mysterious movements conceal? That is what we shall learn from the story of Desrües.
Desrües, a name celebrated in the annals of crime! Desrües, the most finished type of the hypocritical poisoner!
(To be continued)
JUDICIAL COMPLIMENTS.
By Joseph Ullman.
THE learned counsel who were "sat upon " by the courts in the cases cited in the article " Animadversion of Counsel by the Court " in the " Green Bag " for April, may perhaps be consoled by the reflection that courts are as severe in rebuking and commenting on inferior tribunals as they are on counsel. The following instances are from late reports of the New York Court of Appeals. All of them are reversals, and the remarks have reference in every case to the propositions and rulings of the courts below, and not to the arguments of counsel. It must be remembered, also, that appeals to our highest court are taken, not from the decisions of the court of first instance, but from the court in banc (general term), which is an intermediate appellate court, composed usually of three judges. The following com ments therefore apply to adjudications which had been approved generally by four judges (in two courts) below.
"The current of authority has been, for a long course of years, uniform and unbroken in the highest courts of the State; and as no opinion was rendered in the courts below, we are at a loss to know the theory upon which they proceeded in giving judgment to the plaintiff."— Ruger, C. J. Candee v. Smith, 93 N. Y. 349.
"While the defendant bore an assumed name, he was physically at all times within this State, and there was no hiding or concealment of his person except as he assumed and bore the fictitious name. It passes my comprehension how, by any process of reasoning or metaphysics, such a person continually present in the State for nearly ten years can be said never to have come here, and to have been continually absent from the State." — Earl, J. Engel v. Fischer, 102 N. Y. 400.
"The proceedings in the Surrogate's Court, and the decision which closed them were without any apparent regard to certain well-established equitable principles; to the recognition and protection of which every person is entitled, while accounting in that court for his acts as executor or administrator. . . . There is something in this
which shocks the legal as well as the moral
sense."— Gray, J Matter of Niles, 113 N. Y. 547.
"We think the judgments of the courts below in this case have proceeded in disregard of the elementary rules referred to." — Thomas v. The Musical, &c. Union, 30 N. Y. State Reporter, 563, Court of Appeals, April 15, 1890.
"We are of the opinion that the courts below have erred in their views of this case, and that the question presented by the exception has been repeatedly adjudged in favor of the plaintiff by the courts of this State. ... It seems to
