His witnesses came forward; they were Patrick Doole and Michael Sullivan. But all that _Misther_ Doole could prove was the drunkenness of the Dermodys on the day of the robbery; and Mr. Sullivan had nothing to say to it at all, only that Kitty Kavanagh was a nice young _cratur_, and her father was just like her for all the world.
This was of course all nothing in the face of the fact so distinctly sworn to, and the prisoner was committed for trial.--So the interesting Kitty Kavanagh was sent to gaol, and perhaps lost her character for ever, for a bit of old calico, not worth sixpence.
Mons. Gaspard Jacques Hercule Flament, a French gentleman with one eye--"_dégraisseur extraordinaire_ to the British public;" was brought before the magistrate to show cause why he should not be committed to prison for neglecting to maintain his wife in that style of elegance and comfort to which she was entitled--or rather, for neglecting her maintenance altogether.
The lady, Mrs. Flament, was a pretty, little, black-eyed, sprightly Englishwoman; who, "by some odd whim or other," as she said, fell in love with, and married Mr. Flament, about six years ago. But they never could agree very well; and after five years of connubial misery, they determined to separate--Mr. Flament undertaking to allow her a separate maintenance of ten shillings a-week; with which she was very well content, as she had "a good comfortable mother to fly to." Mr. Flament, however, was not a man of his word; for, though he paid the ten shillings a-week pretty regularly at the outset of their separation, he afterwards reduced it to seven, and latterly to three. This, she humbly submitted to the magistrate, was an income upon which no lady could exist; and, as Mr. Flament was the very best _scourer_ at that moment out of Paris, she did hope his worship would compel him to make her a more suitable allowance.
Mr. Flament could speak no English, and so he was attended by a "professor of languages" in a military cloak; and this professor took great pains to convince the magistrate that Mr. Flament was a very poor man, and that Mrs. Flament was a very naughty woman. "She has robbed her husband three times," said the professor,--"shut him up in _de prisonne_ vonce, and made _seex_, seven hondred _grands faux pas_!--Monsieur Flament had better broke de best of his two leg, dan marry such hussey! hussey! as madame his vife!"