We knew to what
base purpose you had used the comeliness and youth and good address with
which nature had endowed you; and now we have learned how evilly you
have misused your talents--with what perverted ingenuity you have
striven, at so early an age, to set at naught those precautions by which
your country has lately endeavored to secure for itself efficient public
servants."
"That's neat," whispered a learned friend to Mr. Balais, reverently
shutting his eyes, as though in rapt admiration.
"Very," returned that gentleman. "He's bidding for the Lord Chief
Justiceship."
"In the whole course of my legal experience, young man," continued the
judge, "I have never seen a case which seems to me to call for more
exemplary punishment than yours. The promise of your future is dark
indeed--bad for yourself, and bad for that society which, though so
fitted to adorn and benefit it, you have chosen to outrage. I will not,
however, reproach you further; I will rather express a hope that when
you return to the world after your long probation--and it will be as
long as I am able to make it--you may be a wiser and better, as well as
a much older man. The sentence of the court is, that you be kept in
penal servitude for the space of twenty years."
CHAPTER XXXII.
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