Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/243

230 want to fix the limits, and then to show that the sævitia, or cruelty, was continuous.”

“The last time, sir,” said Mrs. Barber, “I shall never forget it. We were stopping at the Pavilion, at FolkstoneFolkestone [sic]: we had just come back from Paris, and I was very tired with the journey, for Augustus had insisted on my crossing that night—the stormiest night in the whole year—and I had gone to bed, and fallen asleep, when I was awoken with a stifling sensation, and found my nose in flames.”

“Your nose in flames, Mrs. Barber?” said Dr. Dodge. “Allow me to say that that is a very singular circumstance!”

“Ah! but it’s true for all that. Augustus had rubbed my nose over with cold cream, and then he had torn off a bit of my handkerchief, and cold-creamed that too, and then he put that on my nose, and set fire to it. I hope that’s cruel enough; but he was so very, very unkind.”

“I protest, madam, in the course of my professional experience I never heard of such a fact,” said Dodge. “I can’t get nearer it than and, in which case the husband had slit the lady’s nose up with a pen-knife. This, if done with felonious intent, was obviously well enough, and would have brought Mr. Mapleson within the cutting and maiming statutes; but it was proved on his side, aliunde, that he was fanatically convinced of the advantages of the Taliacotian operation, and did seriously intend the conversion of the wife’s nose from a snub to a Grecian. He was examined according to the forms then in use amongst us at the Commons, and deposed that the snub-like character of the lady’s nose had weighed upon his spirits for years—that he had brought her over to his own views—that she actually requested him to proceed with the operation, and that in pursuance of such request the alleged injury was inflicted. The Court decided that whatever might be said to such a transaction before another tribunal, it could not be pronounced to be sævitia in an Ecclesiastical Court. Here was the husband intending the