The Inner Witness. himself unable to decide: A Smyrniote woman was accused before him of the mur der of her husband, in revenge for the latter's having slain a son of hers by a former marriage. Here was a dilemma! He could not acquit a convicted murderess, and yet shrunk from condemning a mother whom love for her offspring had betrayed into crime. The laws allowed no mitigated penalties. He sent the case to the Areopagus, who, equally perplexed, tided over the difficulty by directing the criminal to come up for judgment in one hundred years. The Em peror Claudius, who was certainly no Solo mon, nevertheless pronounced a judgment which might bear a parallel with that of the wise king. A mother who disavowed her son was cited before the imperial seat. The evidence proved conflicting. Claudius cut the Gordian knot by ordering the woman to marry the young complainant. This unex pected decree awoke the inner witness. The mother confessed her son. Pedro the Cruel's judgment, in the case of a tiler, is deserving of remembrance. While pursuing his calling on the roof of a lofty mansion, the man lost his balance, and af ter clinging some agonized moments to a slight projection, let go his hold, and fell into the street. As fate would have it, he dropped plump upon an individual unluckier than himself, who was passing at that in opportune moment, and was killed on the spot; the tiler himself sustaining no serious injury. The son of the man who was killed commenced a process against him who had fallen; and the case was brought before the king, who decreed that the tiler should be absolved from all demands. Leave, how ever, was reserved for the plaintiff, if he pleased, to jump from an elevation equal to that from which the defendant had fallen; the latter being first placed below in a con venient position to break the other's fall. The proposal was declined. The story of Shylock and Antonio seems to date from the age of Amurath the First. A Turk lent a Christian trader one hundred
crowns, on the condition that if the debt were not paid at a certain period, the de faulter should forfeit two ounces of flesh. The debtor failed. The Moslem Shylock stuck to his bond. Amurath decreed that he might exact the penalty, but with the un derstanding that if he took an atom more or less than his due, he should suffer in a similar manner. No vexatious stipulations were made, as at Venice, about the " blood." The judgments of the Duke d'Ossuna might have suggested to Cervantes the never-to-be-forgotten decisions of Sancho Panza, during his brief but brilliant rule at Barataria. On the occasion of a grand fete the duke went on board one of the galleys, with the humane purpose of releasing a pri soner, in honor of the day. Approaching the first bench, to which six of the unfortunate convicts were chained, he questioned the nearest as to his crime. The man demurely replied that he was entirely innocent of crime, but found his consolation in the re flection that the Almighty dispenser of events supplied him with the patience his case required. Number Two declared that the machinations of his personal enemies alone had brought him to the bar. Number Three took a more legal objection. He had not enjoyed the full formality of a trial. Number Four's case was particularly hard. The lord of his village had corrupted his wife, and, to get rid of him, suborned false testimony. Number Five had been accused of theft. Of that, however, he was completely inno cent, and, were the whole village (that of Somma) fortunately present, they would prove it. Number Six, who had enjoyed the opportunity of observing that none of these little explanations had entirely satis fied the duke, adopted a different course. "Your Excellency," he replied, " I am from Naples. It is a large city, but, upon my faith, I do not believe its walls enclosed a greater rascal than I. Justice has dealt leniently with such a wretch, in condemning him only to the galleys." The duke smiled. " Take this scoundrel instantly from the bench," he
