TESTING HER INNOCENCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 188, 3 November 1876, Page 15

TESTING HER INNOCENCE.

The following touching scene recently occuried in a Parisian court of •justice. A poor, pale, wan seamstress was arraigned for theft. She appeared at the bar with a boy eleven or twelve mouths old in her arms, her child. She went to get some work one day, and it was supposed she stole three coins of lOf. each. The money was missed soon atter she left her employer, and a servant was sent to her room U. claim it. The servant found her about to quit the rooms with the /three gold pieces in her hand. She said to the servant, " I was going to carry them back to you." Nevertheless slic was carried to the Commissioner of Police, and he ordered her to be sent before the court for trial. She was too poor to engage a lawyer, and when asked by the Judge what she had to say for herself, she answered, " The day I went to my employer s I carried my child with me. Ib was in my arms as it is now. I was not paying attention to it. There were several other gold pieces on the mantei-piece, and unknown to me it stretched out its little hands and seized the three pieces, which I did not observe until 1 got home. lat once put on my bonnet, and was going back £> my employer when I was arrested. This is the solemn truth, as I nope tor heaven s mercy." The court could not believe this story. They upbraided the mother for her impudence m endeavoring to palm off such a manifest lie for the truth. They besought her, for her own sake, to retract so absurd a tale, for it would be of no effect, but oblige the court to sentence her to a much severer punishment than they were disposed to inflict upon one so young, evidently steeped so deeply in poverty. Ihese appeals had no effect, except m strengthening the poor mother s pertinacious adherence to her original story. As this firmness was sustained by that look of innocence which the most adroit criminal cannot counterfeit, tie court was at some loss to discover what decision justice demanded. To relieve their embarrassment, one of the judges proposed to renew the scene described by the mother. Ihe gold coins were placed on the clerk's table. The mother was requested to assume the position in which she stood at her employer s house. Then there was a Wtlung in the court. «£a*A J a 0??a 0 ?? dl ! COTe " J f } he b "g bfc coin > eyed them for a moment, smiled, and then stretched forth its tiny hands and clutched them in its lingers with a miser's eagerness. The mother was acquitted