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"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant," nineteenth century womanhood frowns, and deplores the brutal depravity which alone explains the presence of that white-veiled vestal band, whose snowy arms are thrust in signal over the parapet of the bloody arena; yet fair daughters of the latest civilization show unblushing flower faces among the heaving mass of the "great unwashed" who crowd our court-rooms and listen to revolting details more repugnant to genuine modesty, than the mangled remains in the Colosseum.
I agreed with her. "And I never have any one to take me canoeing any more." "Let's go now," I suggested, "before dinner." So we went. It was a keen pleasure to be on the lake again after the sultry court-rooms and offices, and the wind and exercise quickly brought back my appetite and spirits.
In the center of the room was another larger table around which in rude chairs the lawyers were grouped, too often with their feet on top of it. Rough benches were placed there for the jury, the parties to the suit, witnesses and bystanders. The court-rooms were nearly always crowded for here were rehearsed and acted the dramas, the tragedies, and the comedies of real life.
Peter streets, in company with the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It was a favorite rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the court-rooms and municipal bureaus.
A well-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover among court-rooms. Young men are constantly losing their health at the bar; lung diseases, dyspepsia, follow them up, gradually sapping their vitality. Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession have actually fallen dead as they stood pleading, victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain.
The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms, lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries, where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their earlier practice, is something simply appalling.
The little dark woman became the toast of every hardened newspaper reporter who came in contact with her. The newsboys learned to recognise her from her pictures, and as she went in and out of the court-rooms and the lawyers' offices they would watch and wait for her, doff their dirty caps, smile, hand her a flower, and cry: "She's de queen!"
To him it was all a matter of legal prowess with victory to the heavy battalions. "Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily, crowded out of the federal building," her companion explained as the cab stopped before a grimy office building. Isabelle had expected that the trial would be in some sort of public building, which might have at least the semblance of serving as a temple of justice.
Among them one whose name will always be inseparable from the history of New Orleans has a permanent place in this story. One morning many years ago, when some business had brought me into a corridor of one of the old court buildings facing the Place d'Armes, a loud voice from within one of the court-rooms arrested my own and the general ear.
"Here's your way, sor," said the policeman, turning into the old City Hall, as it was even then known, and leading me to one of the inner rooms of the labyrinth of offices. The odors of the prison were heavy upon the building. The foul air from the foul court-rooms and offices still hung about the entrance, and the fog-laden breeze of the early morning hours was powerless to freshen it.
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