ess, ruined in his family; and if in
the end he is released, he is never even told what he has been
charged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing him
to justice, of recovering damages from the State. While he himself
is kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidence
which he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is never
given him to disprove it."

The Judge turned and looked at Barbee in simple silence.

Barbee sprang to his feet: "It is a damned shame!" he cried. "Damn
the French! damn such a civilization."

"Why damn the French code? In our own country the same thing goes
on, not as part of our system of jurisprudence, but as part of our
system of--well, we'll say--morals. In this country any man's
secret personal enemy, his so-called religious enemy for instance,
may fabricate any accusation against him. He does not drop it into
the dark crevice of a dead wall, but into the blacker hole of a
living ear. A perfectly innocent man by such anonymous or
untraceable slander can be as grossly injured in reputation, in
business, in his family, out of a prison in this country as in a
prison in France. Slander may circulate about him and he will
never even know what it is, never be confronted by his accuser,
never have power of redress.

"Now what I wish you to remember is this: that in the very nature
of the case a man is often unable to prove his innocence. All over
the world useful careers come to nothing and lives are wrecked,
because men may be ignorantly or malignantly accused of things of
which they cannot stand up and prove that they are innocent. Never
forget that it is impossible for a man finally to demonstrate his
possession of a single great virtue. A man cannot so prove his
bravery. He cannot so prove his honesty or his benevolence or his
sobriety or his chastity, or anything else. As to courage, all
that he can prove is that in a given case or in all tested cases he
was not a coward. As to honesty, all that he can prove is that in
any alleged instance he was not a thief. A man cannot even
directly prove his health, mental or physical: all that he can
prove is that he shows no unmistakable evidences of disease. But
an enemy may secretly circulate the charge that these evidences
exist; and all the evidences to the contrary that the man himself
may furnish will never disperse that impression. It is so for
every great virtue. His final possession of a