d then replied,
"These questions we are of opinion are irrelevant to the defence, and
need not be answered."

"I only ask you, as a favor, Herr Procurator," said I.

"The law recognizes no favors, nor accepts courtesies."

"Does it also reject common sense?--is it deaf to all intelligence?--is
it indifferent to every appeal to reason?--is it dead to--"

But he would not wait for more, and having saluted me thrice profoundly,
retired from the gallery and left me alone with my indignation.

The great pile of paper still lay on the table next me, and in my anger
I hurled it from me to the middle of the room, venting I know not what
passionate wrath at the same time on everything German. "This the land
of primitive simplicity and patriarchal virtues, forsooth! This the
country of elevated tastes and generous instincts! Why, it is all Bureau
and Barrack!" I went on for a long time in this strain, and I felt the
better for it. The operative surgeons tell us that no men recover so
certainly or so speedily after great operations as the fellows
who scream out and make a terrible uproar. It is your patient,
self-controlling creature who sinks under the suffering he will not
confess; and I am confident that it is a wise practice to blow off the
steam of one's indignation, and say all the most bitter things one
can think of in moments of disappointment, and, so to say, prepare the
chambers of your mind for the reception of better company.

After a while I got up, gathered the papers together, and prepared to
read them. Legal amplifications and circumlocutions are of all lands
and peoples; but for the triumph of this diffusiveness commend me to the
Germans. To such an extent was this the case, that I reached the eighth
page of the precious paper before I got finally out of the titular
description of the vice-governor in whose district the event was laid.
Armed, however, with heroic resolution, I persevered, and read on
through the entire night,--I will not say without occasional refreshers
in the shape of short naps; but the day was already breaking when I
turned over the last page, and read the concluding little blessing on
the Emperor, under whose benign reign all the good was encouraged,
all evil punished, and the Hoch-gelehrter--Hoch wohl-geborner Herr
der Hofrath, Ober Procurators-fiscal-Secretar, charged with the due
execution of the present decree.

In the language of _precis_ writing, the event might be stated thus: