tracy in general is a beginning of social
dissolution. Destroy that institution, and reconstruct it on another
basis; insist--as was the case before the Revolution--that judges should
show a large guarantee of fortune; but, at any cost, believe in it! Do
not make it an image of society to be insulted!

In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor man,
has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor that
seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness is
dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the
present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the magistracy
might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of fortune; but
with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.

The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the power
intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the conditions of
preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion ought to make no
difference in the habits of life of the suspected parties. Houses of
detention for them ought to be constructed in Paris, furnished and
arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the feeling of the public
with regard to suspected persons. The law is good, and is necessary; its
application is in fault, and public feeling judges the laws from the
way in which they are carried out. And public opinion in France
condemns persons under suspicion, while, by an inexplicable reaction, it
justifies those committed for trial. This, perhaps, is a result of the
essentially refractory nature of the French.

This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors
which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it
was one of the most important.

To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in
the examining judge's chambers; to understand the respective positions
of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object
of whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the
inquisition of the magistrate--well named in prison slang, "the curious
man"--it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned under
suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or eight
publics that compose _the Public_, nothing of how much the police know,
or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as to the
circumstances of the crime.

Thus, to give a man in custody such inform