'I should lose it,' he told me, 'and my defending him would furnish the motive for another charge against him and perhaps one against me.

Go to Senor M----, who is a forceful and fluent speaker and a Peninsular of great influence.' I did so, and the noted lawyer took charge of the case, and conducted it with mastery and brilliance.

But your father's enemies were numerous, some of them hidden and unknown.

False witnesses abounded, and their calumnies, which under other circumstances would have melted away before a sarcastic phrase from the defense, here assumed shape and substance.

If the lawyer succeeded in destroying the force of their testimony by making them contradict each other and even perjure themselves, new charges were at once preferred.