All the facts I have been able to put together about the case are gathered from this sentence and from those of the courts of appeal.  These sentences, however, are extremely lengthy, very indistinct, and encumbered with a great deal of legal phraseology.  As they are all alike I may as well give an abstract of this one as a specimen of all.  The sentence begins with the following moral remarks:  “Frequent paternal admonitions, alleged scarcity of daily food, and the evil counsels of others, had alienated the heart of the prisoner to such an extent, that feelings of affection and reverence towards his own father, Venanzio, had given place to contempt, disobedience, ill-will, and even worse.”  No one, however, would have supposed that he “was capable of becoming a parricide, as was too clearly proved on the fatal night in question.”  After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much in the words in which I have given them.  This is followed by a statement of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, “considering that,” &c.  The case of the prosecution was clear enough.  The medical evidence proved that the father died of the wounds received on the above-named night.  The fact that the wounds were inflicted by the prisoner, was established by the evidence of his mother and sister, who overheard the quarrel between him and his father, by the flight after commission of the crime, by the discovery of a blood-stained knife dropped on the threshold, by the deposition of the father before death, and lastly, by the confession of the prisoner himself, who admitted the crime, though under extenuating circumstances.  The fact that the sister never heard the knife open, although it had three clasps, was asserted to be evidence that the prisoner entered the room with his knife open and intending to commit the crime.  This charge of malice prepense was supported by the son’s refusal to answer his father, by the insolence of his language, and by the number and vehemence of the stabs he inflicted.

The prisoner’s defence was also very simple.  According to his own story, he was half drunk on his return home.  His father not only taunted and threatened him, but at last seized the door-bar and began knocking him about the head; and then, at last, maddened with pain and passion, he drew out a knife he had picked up on the road, and stabbed his father, hardly knowing what he did.  On the bare statement of facts, I should deem this version of the story the more probable of the two, but as no details whatever are given of the evidence on either side, it is impossible to judge.  The court at any rate decided that there was no proof of the prisoner having been drunk, and that the evidence of his father having struck him was of a suspicious character, “while,” they add, “it would be absurd and immoral to maintain, that a father, whose right and duty it is