orte did not perceive this. They mistook my work for the work of
a ripe scholar.

They would not yet let me go: I must sit down and write before them. As
I dipped my pen in the ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white
paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one of my judges began
mincingly to apologize for the pain he caused.

"Nous agissons dans l'interet de la verite. Nous ne voulons pas vous
blesser," said he.

Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered,--

"Dictate, Monsieur."

Rochemorte named this theme: "Human Justice."

Human Justice! What was I to make of it? Blank, cold abstraction,
unsuggestive to me of one inspiring idea; and there stood M. Emanuel,
sad as Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his accusers.

At these two I looked. I was gathering my courage to tell them that I
would neither write nor speak another word for their satisfaction, that
their theme did not suit, nor their presence inspire me, and that,
notwithstanding, whoever threw the shadow of a doubt on M. Emanuel's
honour, outraged that truth of which they had announced themselves
the--champions: I _meant_ to utter all this, I say, when suddenly, a
light darted on memory.

Those two faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and
whisker--those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous
visages--were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full
gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me
to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt
morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless
foreigner beyond her reckoning and her strength, chased her breathless
over a whole quarter of the town.

"Pious mentors!" thought I. "Pure guides for youth! If `Human Justice'
were what she ought to be, you two would scarce hold your present post,
or enjoy your present credit."

An idea once seized, I fell to work. "Human Justice" rushed before me
in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with arms akimbo. I saw her in
her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or
help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and
starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled
round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy,
cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had
a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short
black pipe, and a b