ignorance of the many, are incapable of
securing the happiness of mankind. He perceives this truth in the
serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his mind. He expresses his
convictions with measure, restraint and harmony, which are indeed
princely qualities. He is a great analyst of illusions. He searches and
probes their innermost recesses as if they were realities made of an
eternal substance. And therein consists his humanity; this is the
expression of his profound and unalterable compassion. He will flatter
no tribe no section in the forum or in the market-place. His lucid
thought is not beguiled into false pity or into the common weakness of
affection. He feels that men born in ignorance as in the house of an
enemy, and condemned to struggle with error and passions through endless
centuries, should be spared the supreme cruelty of a hope for ever
deferred. He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the
almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege,
to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat
their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can
conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their
irremediable littleness. He knows this well because he is an artist and
a master; but he knows, too, that only in the continuity of effort there
is a refuge from despair for minds less clear-seeing and philosophic than
his own. Therefore he wishes us to believe and to hope, preserving in
our activity the consoling illusion of power and intelligent purpose. He
is a good and politic prince.

"The majesty of justice is contained entire in each sentence pronounced
by the judge in the name of the sovereign people. Jerome Crainquebille,
hawker of vegetables, became aware of the august aspect of the law as he
stood indicted before the tribunal of the higher Police Court on a charge
of insulting a constable of the force." With this exposition begins the
first tale of M. Anatole France's latest volume.

The bust of the Republic and the image of the Crucified Christ appear
side by side above the bench occupied by the President Bourriche and his
two Assessors; all the laws divine and human are suspended over the head
of Crainquebille.

From the first visual impression of the accused and of the court the
author passes by a characteristic and natural turn to the historical and
moral significance of those two emblems