CHAPTER III.


The colonel's physician advised him to take medicine, to reduce his
system, and give him the appearance of one rapidly sinking under a
pulmonary affection. He consented, as such a plan was considered the
most likely to succeed. It will be readily seen, that the design was to
work upon the sympathies of the officers, and thus procure his
enlargement. Nor were they disappointed. The colonel's health began to
fail. The drugs acted their appropriate part. Some of his friends made
vigorous exertions to have him removed to the hospital, declaring it
necessary for the continuation of life. Others were actively engaged in
giving forth intimations, and expressing their fears that he would die
before his trial came on, always taking care to assert their confidence
of his innocence. This was a mere ruse, to trick the officers into a
consent for his removal. But they had mistaken the character of the men
with whom they were dealing. They were not to be moved by exhibitions of
suffering humanity. Their hearts had become insensible to human misery
and they resisted all appeals to sympathy.

There was now but one alternative for the friends of the prisoner. They
must apply the drugs more assiduously, till they made a mere skeleton of
their subject; and then try the virtue of the "almighty dollar." This
now seemed to be the only thing that would move the hearts of
seven-eighths of the police judges, marshals, wardens, and prosecutors.
Such were the administrators of public justice, at that time, in New
Orleans. The greater part were men, who, at some period of their lives,
had been steeped chin-deep in infamy. Some were men of wealth and
liberally educated. They were men who would shrink from giving an
account of their early years. Several were verging upon three score