“And why,” he continued, “should Brazilian justice pursue you?”
“Because I was sentenced to death in 1826 in the diamond affair at
Tijuco.”
“You confess then that you are Joam Dacosta?”
“I am Joam Dacosta.”
All this was said with great calmness, and as simply as possible. The
little eyes of Judge Jarriquez, hidden by their lids, seemed to say:
“Never came across anything like this before.”
He had put the invariable question which had hitherto brought the
invariable reply from culprits of every category protesting their
innocence. The fingers of the judge began to beat a gentle tattoo on
the table.
“Joam Dacosta,” he asked, “what were you doing at Iquitos?”
“I was a fazender, and engaged in managing a farming establishment of
considerable size.”
“It was prospering?”
“Greatly prospering.”
“How long ago did you leave your fazenda?”
“About nine weeks.”
“Why?”
“As to that, sir,” answered Dacosta, “I invented a pretext, but in
reality I had a motive.”
“What was the pretext?”
“The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of
different products of the Amazon.”
“Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?”
And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself:
“Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods.”
“The real motive,” replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, “was the
resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of my
country.”
“You give yourself up!” exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool.
“You give yourself up of your own free will?”
“Of my own free will.”
“And why?”
“Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligatin to live
under a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to my
wife and children that which belongs to them; in short, sir,
because—-”
“Because?”
“I was innocent!”
“That is what I was waiting for,” said Judge Jarriquez.
And while his fingers tattooed a slightly more audible march, he made
a sign with his head to Dacosta, which signified as clearly as
possible, “Go on! Tell me your history. I know it, but I do not wish
to interrupt you in telling it in your own way.”
Joam Dacosta, who did not disregard the magistrate’s far from
encouraging attitude, could not but see this, and he told the history
of his whole life. He spoke quietly without departing from the calm
he had imposed upon himself, without omitting any circumstances which
had preceded or succeeded his condemnation. In the same tone he
insisted on the honored and honorable life he had led since his
escape, on his duties as head of his family, as husband and father,
which he had so worthily fulfilled. He laid stress only on one
circumstance–that which had brought him to Manaos to urge on the
revision of the proceedings against him, to procure his
rehabilitation–and that he was compelled to do.
Judge Jarriques, who was naturally prepossessed against all
criminals, did not interrupt him. He contented himself with opening
and shutting his eyes like a man who heard the story told for the
hundredth time; and when Joam Dacosta laid on the table the memoir
which he had drawn up, he made no movement to take it.
“You have finished?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you persist in asserting that you only left Iquitos to procure
the revision of the judgment against you.”
“I had no other intention.”
“What is there to prove that? Who can prove that, without the
denunciation which had brought about your arrest, you would have
given yourself up?”
“This memoir, in the first place.”
“That memoir was in your possession, and there is nothing to show
that had you not been arrested, you would have put it to the use you
say you intended.”
“At the least, sir, there was one thing that was not in my
possession, and of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt.”
“What?”
“The letter I wrote to your predecessor, Judge Ribeiro, the letter
which gave him notice of my early arrival.”
“Ah! you wrote?”
“Yes. And the letter which ought to have arrived at its destination
should have been handed over to you.”
“Really!” answered Judge Jarriquez, in a slightly incredulous tone.