adapted to
widen and develop the mental energies of the people. This vast
amphitheatre, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults,
and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which
crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an
impartial and incorruptible chance.

When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to
interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day
the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's
arena--a structure which well deserved its name; for, although its
form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely
from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no
tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy,
and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action
the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.

When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king,
surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on
one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened,
and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheatre. Directly
opposite him, on the other side of the enclosed space, were two
doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the
privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and
open one of them. He could open either door he pleased: he was
subject to no guidance or influence but that of the afore-mentioned
impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came
out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be
procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces,
as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the
criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great
wails went up from the hired mourners posted on the outer rim of the
arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and downcast hearts,
wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young
and fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a
fate.

But if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth
from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his
Majesty could select among his fair subjects; and to this lady he
was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered
not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his
affections might be engaged upon an