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 FRANQOIS XAVIER MARTIN aged chief justice was left off of the reor ganized court, March 18, 1846. Though showing few of the infirmities of age — his blindness could hardly be accounted such — Judge Martin was worn out, and the en forced idleness of his retirement fretted him. He failed rapidly, and died in the same year, December loth. While men were still recounting anecdotes of the wisdom, uprightness, and personal idiosyncrasies of the great judge who had for thirty-one years sat on the Supreme Bench, the curious were provided with a fresh item of interest in the will, written on a single sheet of paper folded like an envelope, its brief clauses sprawled all over the sheet, in the well-known handwriting of a man known to have been stone blind at the date assigned. The will was olographic, written, signed, and dated in his own hand, and those who had sat with him on the Bench and seen him write attested the genuineness of the document when it was offered and admitted to probate. " I institute my brother, Paul Barthelemy Martin, heir to my whole estate, real and personal, and my testamentary executor and detainer of my estate. In case of his death, absence, or disability, I name my friend and colleague, Edward Simon, my testamentary executor and de tainer of my estate. New Orleans, this twenty-first day of May, eighteen hundred and forty-four. F. X. MARTIN." There was food enough for gossip in the will itself and that gossip received a fresh supply of material when, before the provi sions of the will could be carried out, suit was instituted in the name of the state to declare the will null and void. There had recently gone into effect a statute (1842) imposing a tax of ten per cent upon all successions and every part thereof go to distributees domiciliated out of any territory or state of this Union. On account of Judge Martin's notorious avarice, it was believed that he had planned to evade the tax, and had really, left the estate to the brother domiciled in New Orleans under a tacit if

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not actual agreement that the legatee would distribute portions of it to the other rela tives. The state brought its suit on the grounds (i) that the will was void and of no effect because when it was alleged to have been made Martin was blind and incapable of making an olographic will, and (2) that the attempt to evade the tax established a fidei commissum, and constituted a fraud upon the state. The Second District Court sustained the contention of the state, where upon appeal was had to the court over which the testator had so lately presided, and three of whose justices had attested the genuineness of the will. The case came on for trial in the June term of 1847, with a formidable array of legal talent on either side: for the state, Attorney-General Elmore, aided by Messrs. Musson and Pepin; for the appellant, the greatest of the Creole lawyers, Mazureau, aided by Messrs. Grima and Legardeur.1 It was shown by the tes timony submitted in the record, that Judge Martin was quite blind in 1844, that he could not even sign his name unless the paper were put, not under his eyes, but under his very nose, the pen dipped in the ink for him, and put in his hand, and his hand guided, to the proper place for signing. Per contra it could not be questioned that the writing in the will was his; and it was further shown that on several occasions since he had become blind he had been known to write legibly at least as much as a dozen or so words. It was further shown that, although he had expressed his disapproval of the ten per cent tax and his belief that it could be evaded, he had never intimated that he meant to evade it, or indicated how this could be done, merely expressing the opinion in conversa tion with his fellow-justices. Moreover, he had told Judge Simon a few months before his death that his nephews in France would not get his money, since they would not leave France. And P. B. Martin, in reply to interrogatories as to whether his 1 La. Annual Reports, II. pp. 667-721.