w that you do?" asked
Mandane. "Because," answered the boy, "before I left home my master
thought I had learnt enough to decide the cases, and he set me to try
the suits. Yes! and I remember once, said he, "I got a whipping for
misjudgment. [17] I will tell you about that case. There were two boys,
a big boy and a little boy, and the big boy's coat was small and the
small boy's coat was huge. So the big boy stripped the little boy and
gave him his own small coat, while he put on the big one himself. Now in
giving judgment I decided that it was better for both parties that each
should have the coat that fitted him best. But I never got any further
in my sentence, because the master thrashed me here, and said that the
verdict would have been excellent if I had been appointed to say what
fitted and what did not, but I had been called in to decide to whom the
coat belonged, and the point to consider was, who had a right to it: Was
he who took a thing by violence to keep it, or he who had had it made
and bought it for his own? And the master taught me that what is lawful
is just and what is in the teeth of law is based on violence, and
therefore, he said, the judge must always see that his verdict tallies
with the law. So you see, mother, I have the whole of justice at my
fingers' ends already. And if there should be anything more I need to
know, why, I have my grandfather beside me, and he will always give me
lessons." [18] "But," rejoined his mother, "what everyone takes to be
just and righteous at your grandfather's court is not thought to be so
in Persia. For instance, your own grandfather has made himself master
over all and sundry among the Medes, but with the Persians equality is
held to be an essential part of justice: and first and foremost, your
father himself must perform his appointed services to the state and
receive his appointed dues: and the measure of these is not his own
caprice but the law. Have a care then, or you may be scourged to death
when you come home to Persia, if you learn in your grandfather's school
to love not kingship but tyranny, and hold the tyrant's belief that he
and he alone should have more than all the rest." "Ah, but, mother,"
said the boy, "my grandfather is better at teaching people to have
less than their share, not more. Cannot you see," he cried, "how he
has taught all the Medes to have less than himself? So set your mind
at rest, mother, my grandfather will never make me, or any on