The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [194]
“Gentlemen, in this condition of affairs it needed but a spark—I do not say a suggestion, I do not say a hint—from this butterfly Brierly, this rejected rival, to cause the explosion. I make no charges, but if this woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached this city in company with Brierly, then I do not know what insanity is.”
When Mr. Braham sat down, he felt that he had the jury with him. A burst of applause followed, which the officer promptly suppressed. Laura, with tears in her eyes, turned a grateful look upon her counsel. All the women among the spectators saw the tears and wept also. They thought as they also looked at Mr. Braham, how handsome he is!
Mrs. Hawkins took the stand. She was somewhat confused to be the target of so many eyes, but her honest and good face at once told in Laura’s favor.
“Mrs. Hawkins,” said Mr. Braham, “will you be kind enough to state the circumstances of your finding Laura?”
“I object,” said Mr. McFlinn, rising to his feet. “This has nothing whatever to do with the case, your honor. I am surprised at it, even after the extraordinary speech of my learned friend.”
“How do you propose to connect it, Mr. Braham?” asked the judge.
“If it please the court,” said Mr. Braham, rising impressively, “your Honor has permitted the prosecution, and I have submitted without a word, to go into the most extraordinary testimony to establish a motive. Are we to be shut out from showing that the motive attributed to us could not by reason of certain mental conditions exist? I purpose, may it please your Honor, to show the cause and the origin of an aberration of mind, to follow it up with other like evidence, connecting it with the very moment of the homicide, showing a condition of the intellect of the prisoner that precludes responsibility.”
“The State must insist upon its objections,” said the District Attorney. “The purpose evidently is to open the door to a mass of irrelevant testimony, the object of which is to produce an effect upon the jury your Honor well understands.”
“Perhaps,” suggested the judge, “the court ought to hear the testimony, and exclude it afterwards, if it is irrelevant.”
“Will your honor hear argument on that?”
“Certainly.”
And argument his honor did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days, from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could say what the rules were. The question of insanity in all its legal aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application affirmed and denied. The case was felt to turn upon the admission or rejection of this evidence. It was a sort of test trial of strength between the lawyers. At the end the judge decided to admit the testimony, as the judge usually does in such cases, after a sufficient waste of time in what are called arguments.
Mrs. Hawkins was allowed to go on.
CHAPTER 56
—Voyre mais (demandoit Trinquamelle) mon amy, comment procedez vous en action criminelle, la partie coupable prinse flagrante crimine?— Comme vous aultres Messieurs (respondit Bridoye)—
“Hag eunn drâ-bennâg hoc’h eûz-hu da lavaroud évid hé wennidigez?”
Mrs. Hawkins slowly and conscientiously, as if every detail of her family history was important, told the story of the steamboat explosion, of the finding and adoption of Laura. Silas, that is Mr. Hawkins, and she always loved Laura as if she had been their own child.
She then narrated the circumstances of Laura’s supposed marriage, her abandonment and long illness, in a manner that touched all hearts. Laura had been a different woman since then.
Cross-examined. At the time of first finding Laura on the steamboat, did she notice that Laura’s mind was at all deranged? She couldn’t say that she did. After the recovery of Laura from her long illness, did Mrs. Hawkins think there were any signs of insanity about her? Witness confessed