' Evidence like this was conclusive; no defence was
listened to, nor indeed had the prisoner any to produce. The Alferez
could deny neither the staircase nor the balcony: the street is there
to this day, like the bricks in Jack Cade's Chimney, testifying all
that may be required; and, as to our friend who saw the leap, there he
was; nobody could deny _him_. The prisoner might indeed have
suggested that she never heard of Acosta's wife, nor had the existence
of such a wife been ripened even into a suspicion. But the bench were
satisfied; chopping logic was of no use; and sentence was pronounced--
that on the eighth day from the day of arrest, the Alferez should be
executed in the public square.
It was not amongst the weaknesses of Catalina--who had so often
inflicted death, and, by her own journal, thought so lightly of
inflicting it (if not under cowardly advantages)--to shrink from facing
death in her own person. Many incidents in her career show the coolness
and even gaiety with which, in any case where death was apparently
inevitable, she would have gone to meet it. But in this case she
_had_ a temptation for escaping it, which was probably in her
power. She had only to reveal the secret of her sex, and the ridiculous
witnesses, beyond whose testimony there was nothing at all against her,
must at once be covered with derision.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226