The
writ had gone from judge's chambers returnable to the full court.
Sister Suspiciosa, bearing the infant Ambrosius, and supported by
two novices and Father Certificatus, had been smuggled into court
through mysterious passages in its rear. Mrs. Ginx also, brought
from Rosemary Street by the little man who provided her with a
bonnet trimmed with orange-colored ribbons, sat staring with red
eyes at her child, now enveloped in a robe that was embroidered
with little crosses.
Why need I tell you, how dead silence fell upon the Court after
the stir caused by the entrance of the judges; how everybody knew
what was coming when a master beneath the bench rose, and called
out, "Re Ginx, an infant, Exparte Mary Ginx!" How the Chief
Justice, fresh and rosy-looking, then blew his nose in a delicate
mauve-colored silk handkerchief: how he tried and discarded
half-a-dozen pens, amid breathless silence; how in his blandest
manner he said: "Who appears for the Respondent?" and Mr. Dignam
Bailey, Q. C., and Mr. Octavius Ernestus, Q. C., rose together to
say that Mr. Ernestus did!
Mr. Ernestus was a Catholic. He was assisted by half-a-dozen
counsel. He riddled the affidavits on the other side, and read
voluminous ones on his own; bitterly animadverted upon the
absence of an affidavit by the father; held up to the scorn of a
civilized world the course pursued towards his meek and gentle
clients by the "fanatical zealots of the Protestant Detectoral
Association;" in moving tones referred to the shrinking of "quiet
recluses, from the gaze of a rude, unsympathizing world;" cited
cases from the time of Magna Charta, down; called upon the Court
to vindicate Protestant justice, ending his peroration with the
aphorism of Lord Mansfield, Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
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