The learned counsel said he would call witnesses to prove the blissful atmosphere in which the parties lived, until the defendant, like a domestic upas-tree, tainted and polluted it.  That van was another Eden, until PUNCH, the serpent, entered.  The lady was a native of Switzerland—­yes, of Switzerland.  Oh, that he (the learned gentleman) could follow her to her early home!—­that he could paint her with the first blush and dawn of innocence, tinting her virgin cheek as the morning sun tinted the unsullied snows of her native Jungfrau!—­that he could lead the gentlemen of the jury to that Swiss cottage where the gentle Felicite (such was the lady’s name) lisped her early prayer—­that he could show them the mountains that had echoed with her songs (since made so very popular by Madame Stockhausen)—­that he could conjure up in that court the goats whose lacteal fluid was wont to yield to the pressure of her virgin fingers—­the kids that gambolled and made holiday about her—­the birds that whistled in her path—­the streams that flowed at her feet—­the avalanches, with their majestic thunder, that fell about her.  Would he could subpoena such witnesses! then would the jury feel, what his poor words could never make them feel—­the loss of his injured client.  On one hand would be seen the simple Swiss maiden—­a violet among the rocks—­a mountain dove—­an inland pearl—­a rainbow of the glaciers—­a creature pure as her snows, but not as cold; and on the other the fallen wife—­a monument of shame!  This was a commercial country; and the jury would learn with additional horror that it was in the sweet confidence of a commercial transaction that the defendant obtained access to his interesting victim.  Yes, gentlemen, (said Mr. P.,) it was under the base, the heartless, the dastardly excuse of business, that the plaintiff poured his venom in the ear of a too confiding woman.  He had violated the sacred bonds of human society—­the noblest ties that hold the human heart—­the sweetest tendrils that twine about human affections.  This should be shown to the jury.  Letters from the plaintiff would be read, in which his heart—­or rather that ace of spades he carried in his breast and called his heart—­would be laid bare in open court.  But the gentlemen of the jury would teach a terrible lesson that day.  They would show that the socialist should not guide his accursed bark into the tranquil seas of domestic comfort, and anchor it upon the very hearthstone of conjugal felicity.  No—­as the gentlemen of the jury were husbands and fathers, as they were fathers and not husbands, as they were neither one nor the other, but hoped to be both—­they would that day hurl such a thunderbolt at the pocket of the defendant—­they would so thrice-gild the incurable ulcers of the plaintiff, that all the household gods of the United Empire would hymn them to their mighty rest, and Hymen himself keep continual carnival at their amaranthine hearths.  “Gentlemen of the jury (said the learned counsel