WISTER,
the detective, is just leaving the witness-box.
CLEAVER. That is the case for the Crown, me lud!
Gathering his robes together, he sits down.
FROME. [Rising and bowing to the JUDGE] If it please your lordship
and gentlemen of the jury. I am not going to dispute the fact that
the prisoner altered this cheque, but I am going to put before you
evidence as to the condition of his mind, and to submit that you
would not be justified in finding that he was responsible for his
actions at the time. I am going to show you, in fact, that he did
this in a moment of aberration, amounting to temporary insanity,
caused by the violent distress under which he was labouring.
Gentlemen, the prisoner is only twenty-three years old. I shall call
before you a woman from whom you will learn the events that led up to
this act. You will hear from her own lips the tragic circumstances
of her life, the still more tragic infatuation with which she has
inspired the prisoner. This woman, gentlemen, has been leading a
miserable existence with a husband who habitually ill-uses her, from
whom she actually goes in terror of her life. I am not, of course,
saying that it's either right or desirable for a young man to fall in
love with a married woman, or that it's his business to rescue her
from an ogre-like husband. I'm not saying anything of the sort. But
we all know the power of the passion of love; and I would ask you to
remember, gentlemen, in listening to her evidence, that, married to a
drunken and violent husband, she has no power to get rid of him; for,
as you know, another offence besides violence is necessary to enable
a woman to obtain a divorce; and of this offence it does not appear
that her husband is guilty.
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