Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-12-17
A FAMOUS FRENcHMAN.
An Advocate Who Delighted in the
Tense of the Unfortunate.

An Advocate Who Delighted in the De-
Tense of the Unfortunate.
'ThiS man is not eloquent, he is elo-
quencesstself," said somebody of La
chaud, and that.,somebody was Gambetta.
What a pity for the bar of every civil
lied country that Maitre Lachaud's ar
dent, overlooking nature could not
master his invincible horror of the
pen! What models are perhaps lost to
the readers of Cicero and Demosthenes
Yet there are records which survive in
the European press of the last half CEN
fury; and the work of restoration, ably
begun by NJ. Saugnier, in the volumes
just issued, will, we trust, be carried to
completion.
Lachaud was not only the orator, but
in a sense the dramatist, of the French
assizes; no other advocate can show us,
as he has done, what great criminal is
in himself
In the hands of Lachaud, says M.
Saugnier in the preface, criminal
cause ceased to be vulgar and common
place, and was transformed. The crime,
: the criminal, and the horror Justly in
spired by them were no longer its only
features; one recognized in the criminal
n human being driven hither and thither
by human passions. Thus each case
became a romance, a drama in which
the great advocate was stage manager.
Doctors dissected the body; Lachaud
dissected hearts and souls, and, passed
master in the science, he made the study
interesting and attractive to everybody.
His vivid imagination, assisted by his
noble heart and Astounding charity, oft
en- aroused good and noble sentiments
deeply concealed in the hearts of his
clients, and unknown even to them;
many who heard him felt that the ex-
FOUNDER had had emotions which they
themselves had experienced, so truly
did Lachaud speak to the heart. After
stirring men to the very depths of their
being in this way, and after having
given them such unforeseen emotions,
he became their master. What more
natural?
Truth, love and mercy; who can pic
M. Lachaud that, before addressing a
Jury i'm a case of life and death, he would
withdraw from the sight of men to a
quiet corner of his parish church, and
there. before the chapel of the Virgin,
lighting taper, according to the touch
ing custom of his childhood, he would
ponder the history of crime, and seek
in the silence of his own heart the argu-
ments that went with such irresistible
force to the hearts of those who heard
the sweet, imprisoned music of that
voice. He never stopped to jury; he
unbent to them, he raised them to the
height of his own emotions. His pity
followed felon to the grave and pre-
ceded him beyond it. What an earnest,
delicate and humane appeal to the con-
science of a wretch whose head was
within measurable distance of the
scaf,o.d?
Some one has spoken of the defend
ants irreligious opinions. On that
point l have little to say; as NJ. rAvocat
General does not call him to account
for what he has thought it is not nv
duty to do so; but 1 deeply regret the
fatal error which at this moment must
increase his unhappiness, For my own
part 1 know of no greater consolation
given to US here below than those drawn
from faith and the certainty of Gods
Judgment; for my own part I pity an
unhappy creature who thinks that every-
thing ends with life and this world; for
any own part my reason, even more
loudly than my heart, asserts that the
unhappy who have not deserved their