I, the
only Chartist there? Might there not have been dozens of them?--emissaries
from London, dressed up as starving labourers, and rheumatic old women?
There were actually traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the
country, and setting up a seraglio of them in D * * * * Cathedral. How did
the court know that there was not one?
Ay, how indeed? and how did I know either? I really began to question
whether the man might not be right after all. The whole theory seemed
so horribly coherent--possible, natural. I might have done it, under
possession of the devil, and forgotten it in excitement--I might--perhaps
I did. And if there, why not elsewhere? Perhaps I had helped Jourdan
Coupe-tete at Lyons, and been king of the Munster Anabaptists--why not?
What matter? When would this eternity of wigs, and bonnets, and glaring
windows, and ear-grinding prate and jargon, as of a diabolic universe of
street organs, end--end--end--and I get quietly hanged, and done with it
all for ever?
Oh, the horrible length of that day! It seemed to me as if I had been
always on my trial, ever since I was born.
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