King Ferdinand fixed his eyes upon him with an expression before which the hardiest guilt must for the moment have quailed; but not a muscle of the prisoner's countenance moved, and Ferdinand proceeded to address him gravely, yet feelingly.
"Arthur Stanley," he said, "we have heard from Don Felix d'Estaban that you have refused our proffered privilege of seeking and employing some friends, subtle in judgment, and learned in all the technicalities of such proceedings, as to-day will witness, to undertake your cause.

Why is this?
Is your honor of such small amount, that you refuse even to accept the privilege of defence?
Are you so well prepared yourself to refute the evidence which has been collected against you, that you need no more?
Or have we indeed heard aright, that you have resolved to let the course of justice proceed, without one effort on your part to avert an inevitable doom?
This would seem a tacit avowal of guilt; else, wherefore call your doom inevitable?
If conscious of innocence, have you no hope, no belief in the Divine Justice, which can as easily make manifest innocence as punish crime?
Ere we depute to others the solemn task of examination, and pronouncing sentence, we bid you speak, and answer as to the wherefore of this rash and contradictory determination--persisting in words that you are guiltless, yet refusing the privilege of defence.

Is life so valueless, that you cast it degraded from you?
As Sovereign and Judge, we command you answer, lest by your own rash act the course of justice be impeded, and the sentence of the guilty awarded to the innocent.
As man to man, I charge thee speak; bring forward some proof of innocence.

Let me not condemn to death as a coward and a murderer, one whom I have loved and trusted as a friend! Answer--wherefore this strange callousness to life--this utter disregard of thine honor and thy name ?" For a moment, while the King addressed him as man to man, the pallid cheek and brow of the prisoner flushed with painful emotion, and there was a scarcely audible tremulousness in his voice as he replied: "And how will defence avail me?
How may mere assertion deny proof, and so preserve life and redeem honor?
My liege, I had resolved to attempt no defence, because I would not unnecessarily prolong the torture of degradation.

Had I one proof, the slightest proof to produce, which might in the faintest degree avail me, I would not withhold it; justice to my father's name would be of itself sufficient to command defence.