Joseph Wilmot, or, The Memoirs of a Man-Servant — page 303: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A LL A LCL LL LE i Le 290 JOSEPH WILMOT; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A MAN-SERVANT. of the Special Commission, and that a certain Signor Turano had been arrested as an imposter and aforger. The name of Turano happened to reach the ears of the old peasant-woman ; and she at once cried out that it was the name of the gentleman who had lodged with her. The sensa- tion was now immense; and the presiding Judge commanded the ushers to keep the doors of the Court closed, so that no one should go forth to give any intimation of what had just occurred. “Take this witness,” said the presiding Judge, “into the next Court; and let her there point out to you the individual of whom she has been speak- ing—if she should recognise him.” It was under these circumstances that the old peasant-woman was brought by the gendarmes into the Court of the Special Commission; and it was their entrance which so abruptly cut short the concluding observations, which the Corsican was making. It willbe understood that I was at that moment in utter ignorance ¢ of everything that was taking place in the criminal tribunal; but I was just thinking of proceeding thither at the instant the peasant-woman was ushered in by the police- officers. That some fresh phase in the forenoon’s singular proceedings, was about to develope itself, T felt conyinced; and such was evidently the im- pression of eyery one else: forthe crowd instan- taneously made way for the old woman and the gendarmes to pass in the midst, Though ignorant of what.was to ensue, I was at once ‘stricken by the horrible ghastly. look of dismay with which Turano, who had started nervously, up from. his seat, recognised the old woman; and she, pointing her finger towards him in an excited manner, ex: claimed, “’Tis he! ’tis he!” Ob, what a scene then ensued !+what a groan of anguish came irom the lips of the wretched man !—for,he understood_in a moment, what, the presence of the swoman meant there: his guilty conscience told him, that, he was unmas ed and discovered. Never shall I forgot the unutterable agony that was expressed in his countenance when that moan had ceased and he had no longer the power to send forth a sound from his lips. The gendarmes seized upon him, exclaiming, “ You are our prisoner for murder !” Murder !—good heavens! this was the first inti- mation which I had of the horrible charge now pressing against him; and I was still in a bewil- derment what to think, when the wretched man suddenly cried out, “Avaunt, avaunt, Leone!— come not near me with those ghastly gaping wounds !” A thrill of horror shot through the entire audi- ence—a thrill that might be seen as well as felt— the rapid electric influence of feelings painfully startled. But to me what a revelation! ‘Turano the murderer of Leone! Then Durazzo and the page were innocent! They were innocent—and I had all along believed them guilty! Such a dizzi- ness came over me that I felt as if I were about to faint; for joy itself was sickening in the excess of its bewilderment. Little short of a miracle, had it been said, could manifest itself in order to prove Durazzo and the page completely innocent; and this miracle had been wrought but as yet I knew not how! The wretched Turano, more dead than alive, was conducted—or rather carried out of the Court, by the gendarmes; and he fainted when the threshold was reached. He was conveyed to a private room in the Palace of Justice; but none of the crowd were permitted to follow thither, I endeavoured to get into the Criminal Court: I was anxious to be amongst the very first, if not the first, to congratulate the Greeks upon this change of circumstances that had been wrought in their favour: but I found it absolutely impossible to make my way amidst the mass that thronged the place; for the living tide had poured in from the Court of the Special Commission. I was com- pelled to wait for the present in the great hall whence the Courts opened. In a few minutes I perceived one of the gen- darmes who had borne Turano to the private room; and I spoke to him. He informed me t the prisoner had come back to consciousness ; an that thoroughly dejected and broken down, he bad volunteered a confession of his crime. The J udge of Instruction had just been sent to him. I may as well relate here those particulars which I did not however learn until later in the day. It appeared that Turano had a few months back fallen in with Signor Leone in London, just at the very time when the unfortunate young gentleman had heard of the sitting of the Land Commis- sioners at Ajaccio. From Leone’s lips Turano heard all the particulars of Leone’s claim to the patrimony of St. Bartholomew; and the circum. stances connected with the Monte d’Oro tamily of a bygone period necessarily involyed themselves in Leone’s explanations. Is was then that Turano learnt for the first time that there were such lands te be claimed; and by a singular coincidence he at about.the same period discovered. that, he himself bore the.very i identical surname of the elder branch of the Monte d’Oro family, which had become extinct, at Marseilles, in France. This, latter dis- covery he made, not.t fee the young Leone, who was himself. iguor: an ‘the fact: but it instan- taneously set the arare mind o Turano to work. He repaired to Paris, where, as we have already seen, he arranged the requisite forgeries for the support of -the claim which he purposed to advance; and after a while he set out for Mar- seilles —thence passing over to Corsica. On his arrival in the island he first of all repaired to the vicinage of the ruins of Monte d’Oro, in order to glean as many traditionary facts as he possibly could, so that he might render every detail of his own statement completely consistent with past events. It would appear that while rambling about in that vicinage, and penetrating near to the ruins of St. Bartholomew, he suddenly encountered Signor Leone. This was in the middle of that me- morable day in the evening of which the murder was perpetrated. The meeting was most unexpected, —Turano little dreaming of finding Leone in that neighbourhood. But all of a sudden it struck him that if he did not at once mention that he himself was a claimant to the Monte d’Oro pro- perty, and perhaps (according to circumstances) a claimant to the patrimony of St. Bartholomew likewise, Leone would think it strange when sub- sequently finding him stepping forward as such a claimant. ‘Turano therefore announced his pre- tensions. Leone, who had all along been appre- hensive lest a member of the supposed extinct family of Monte d’Oro should suddenly make his DOOLK (EC)