of the province!”
“Come, then,” replied Ribeiro.
The jangada was then ready to go down the river. Joam Dacosta
embarked on it with all his people. During the voyage, to the great
astonishment of his wife and son, he landed but rarely, as we know.
More often he remained shut up on his room, writing, working, not at
his trading accounts, but, without saying anything about it, at a
kind of memoir, which he called “The History of My Life,” and which
was meant to be used in the revision of the legal proceedings.
Eight days before his new arrest, made on account of information
given by Torres, which forestalled and perhaps would ruin his
prospects, he intrusted to an Indian on the Amazon a letter, in which
he warned Judge Ribeiro of his approaching arrival.
The letter was sent and delivered as addressed, and the magistrate
only waited for Joam Dacosta to commence on the serious undertaking
which he hoped to bring to a successful issue.
During the night before the arrival of the raft at Manaos Judge
Ribeiro was seized with an attack of apoplexy. But the denunciation
of Torres, whose scheme of extortion had collapsed in face of the
noble anger of his victim, had produced its effect. Joam Dacosta was
arrested in the bosom of his family, and his old advocate was no
longer in this world to defend him!
Yes, the blow was terrible indeed. His lot was cast, whatever his
fate might be; there was no going back for him! And Joam Dacosta rose
from beneath the blow which had so unexpectedly struck him. It was
not only his own honor which was in question, but the honor of all
who belonged to him.
CHAPTER IV
MORAL PROOFS
THE WARRANT against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been issued
by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the
magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the
successor of the late justice.
This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez. He was a surly
little fellow, whom forty years’ practice in criminal procedure had
not rendered particularly friendly toward those who came before him.
He had had so many cases of this sort, and tried and sentenced so
many rascals, that a prisoner’s innocence seemed to him _à priori_
inadmissable. To be sure, he did not come to a decision
unconscientiously; but his conscience was strongly fortified and was
not easily affected by the circumstances of the examination or the
arguments for the defense. Like a good many judges, he thought but
little of the indulgence of the jury, and when a prisoner was brought
before him, after having passed through the sieve of inquest,
inquiry, and examination, there was every presumption in his eyes
that the man was quite ten times guilty.
Jarriquez, however, was not a bad man. Nervous, fidgety, talkative,
keen, crafty, he had a curious look about him, with his big head on
his little body; his ruffled hair, which would not have disgraced the
judges wig of the past; his piercing gimlet-like eyes, with their
expression of surprising acuteness; his prominent nose, with which he
would assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide
open, so as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out
of range of ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly
tapping the table in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing
on the mute; and his body so long and his legs so short, and his feet
perpetually crossing and recrossing, as he sat in state in his
magistrate’s chair.
In private life, Jarriquez, who was a confirmed old bachelor, never
left his law-books but for the table which he did not despise; for
chess, of which he was a past master; and above all things for
Chinese puzzles, enigmas, charades, rebuses, anagrams, riddles, and
such things, with which, like more than one European
justice–thorough sphinxes by taste as well as by profession–he
principally passed his leisure.
It will be seen that he was an original, and it will be seen also how
much Joam Dacosta had lost by the death of Judge Ribeiro, inasmuch as