advocate if he were seized with a sudden sickness.
But he only pointed downwards to where lay his ill-@
fated victim; and shook his head, looking all woe-
begone, in mad, mute misery. Astonished, some des-
cended, and bearing the body up the stairs, laid it on
a bench that stood against the wall, and opposite its
destroyer; while a still increasing and motley mul-
titude, including jurors, witnesses, constables, criers,
counsellors, clerks of the court, crown prosecutor, she-
riff, and lastly, the judge himself, hurrying, gathered
round the scene of the catastrophe. A surgeon who
happened to have been subpoened upon the current
trial, opened a vein, but the blood refused to flow;
and a barrister, stripping himself of his gown, threw
it over the body as a pall. No one dared enquire the
origin of what he saw, until the judge arriving, de-
manded: "Who has done this?"

"I," feebly answered the advocate, ghastly pale,
and yet leaning for support on the fatal balustrade.
Alas! what a change! His countenance was grown
haggard, and his white hair hung dishrevelled about
his collapsed visage, like icicles round the pinched
countenance of Winter. Despair was in his look,
and he uttered the name of Amanda, and gazed be-
wildered around him, as if awaking from a sorrowful
dream; and now began to whimper, to gaze upon the
pall-like gown, and now to call upon the spirit that
had flown -- as a scared bird from a bush -- forth from
the body that lay beneath it.

"Narcisse," he feebly cried, "Narcisse, my son,
-- for thou wert yet my son, -- Narcisse, Narcisse," he
reiterated piteously; and the Sheriff advanced in his
purple gown, and girt with his golden hilted sword,

[[119]]

p118 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p119w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p120

v?