The Humbert Trial. the usurers. It is to Mre. Labori's credit that he did not press this appeal too far, and to the credit of the jury that they dis regarded it. The following will serve to show the free dom which prevails between the President of the tribunal and the prisoner at the bar. The prosecution was trying to show that the Daurignacs had personated the Crawfords: THE WITNESS. Some people came to the house who were called " the diplomats," and one " His Highness." THE PRESIDENT. Was this Emile Daurignac? EMILE DAURIGNAC. I pray you, Mr. President, let the witness continue. This is a very serious matter. I am in danger of punishment. You seem to be amus ing yourself, but I am not. THE PRESIDENT. My question is precisely in your line. DAURIGNAC. You appear to wish to cut off the witness. We maintain that the defence should have the largest possible latitude. Consider, vie have waited eight months for this opportunity. THE PRESIDENT. I submit that I am making it as large as possible, and as you deny personating Craw ford, v hen I ask a witness whether you did so you have no occasion to complain. What more would you have»
At the end of a passage of fence between the President and Mme. Humbert, she neatly secures the last word, according to the cus tom of the sex. The President is admonish ing her upon her behavior, which reproof she meets with spirited retort and remonstrance. Finally: THE PRESIDENT. I do not exact personal respect for myself, but you must pay some respect to the court. MME HUMBERT, (with sarcastic politeness). Thank you, Mr. President, for that distinction. It is well put.
The President received the fire of the pris oners and their counsel with perfect com posure, betra ¡tig no irritation and no dis position to resent the freest exercise of their privilege consisten': with a decent regard for order. Being quite able to take care of him self, he had no occasion to retreat behind the barrier of his official dignity. It was a fair field and no favor. In this stage of the trial Mme. Humbert took a more active part than her counsel. She was plainly dressed in black, and ap peared sallow and careworn; but in spite of this, and of her thin and pointed aquiline
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nose and masculine chin, it is apparent that she may have been an attractive, or at least what is called a "stylish" woman. Probably she did not overstate her age in declaring it to be "about forty"; an admission which might not have been wholly satisfactory to a life insurance company, and which was re ceived by the President with some ironical pleasantry, promptly retaliated upon him by the fair defendant. At the close of Cattaui's evidence, she interjected into the proceed ings a commentary upon it of exactly forty minutes; addressing the jury with perfect fluency and self-possession, considerable grace of gesture and manner, and apparently with some force and effect. The President made one or two ineffectual attempts to cut her off, but with this exception she was un disturbed, and judges and jury, as well as the bar and the audience, listened with the closest attention to all she had to sav. Mme. Humbert's long-deferred disclosure, the "awful secret" sprung upon the court and the public in a speech addressed by her to the jury at the very end of the trial—that the mysterious Crawford was actuilly the Rég nier who acted as intermediary between Mar shal Bazaine and Bismarck in the treasonable surrender of Metz in 1870, conveying the inference that the Crawford millions were the corrupt fruit of that transaction, from whence arose the necessity for secrecy and conceal ment—produced no public sensation, and seems to have affected the tribunal, if at all, only as the crowning proof of her genius for mendacity. There is some historical founda tion for such a story, in Bazaine's trial an3 sentence to death for treason, and the con demnation "in contumacy," at the same time, of one Régnier, who had disappeared, for complicity in the affair. It was an ingenious invention, and it aimed high, but it came too late to be of service. The Parisian press and the prosecuting counsel paid tribute to the United States as a world-power by adopting our word "bluff" (pronounced bloof) to char
