on. What was it that I was
about to do? For I had no experience of these things. And, being too
early, I walked a little to and fro, looking at all those my partners in
this matter of the purification of Society. Prosecutors, witnesses,
officials, policemen, detectives, undetected, pressmen, barristers,
loafers, clerks, cadgers, jurymen. And I remember having something of
the feeling that one has when one looks into a sink without holding one's
nose. There was such uneasy hurry, so strange a disenchanted look, a
sort of spiritual dirt, about all that place, and there were--faces! And
I thought: To them my face must seem as their faces seem to me!

Soon I was taken with my accomplices to have my name called, and to be
sworn. I do not remember much about that process, too occupied with
wondering what these companions of mine were like; but presently we all
came to a long room with a long table, where nineteen lists of
indictments and nineteen pieces of blotting paper were set alongside
nineteen pens. We did not, I recollect, speak much to one another, but
sat down, and studied those nineteen lists. We had eighty-seven cases on
which to pronounce whether the bill was true or no; and the clerk assured
us we should get through them in two days at most. Over the top of these
indictments I regarded my eighteen fellows. There was in me a hunger of
inquiry, as to what they thought about this business; and a sort of
sorrowful affection for them, as if we were all a ship's company bound on
some strange and awkward expedition. I wondered, till I thought my
wonder must be coming through my eyes, whether they had the same curious
sensation that I was feeling, of doing something illegitimate, which I
had not been born to do, together with a sense of self-importance, a sort
of unholy interest in thus dealing with the lives of my fellow men. And
slowly, watching them, I came to the conclusion that I need not wonder.
All with the exception perhaps of two, a painter and a Jew looked such
good citizens. I became gradually sure that they were not troubled with
the lap and wash of speculation; unclogged by any devastating sense of
unity; pure of doubt, and undefiled by an uneasy conscience.

But now they began to bring us in the evidence. They brought it quickly.
And at first we looked at it, whatever it was, with a sort of solemn
excitement. Were we not arbiters of men's fates, purifiers of Society,
more important by far than