he greatest engine of society.
Everywhere, even in Paris, the meanness of its surroundings, the
wretched arrangement of the courtrooms, their barrenness and want of
decoration in the most ornate and showy nation upon earth in the matter
of its public monuments, lessens the action of the law's mighty power.
At the farther end of some oblong room may be seen a desk with a green
baize covering raised on a platform; behind it sit the judges on
the commonest of arm-chairs. To the left, is the seat of the public
prosecutor, and beside him, close to the wall, is a long pen filled with
chairs for the jury. Opposite to the jury is another pen with a bench
for the prisoners and the gendarmes who guard them. The clerk of the
court sits below the platform at a table covered with the papers of the
case. Before the imperial changes in the administration of justice were
instituted, a commissary of the government and the director of the jury
each had a seat and a table, one to the right, the other to the left of
the baize-covered desk. Two sheriffs hovered about in the space left in
front of the desk for the station of witnesses. Facing the judges and
against the wall above the entrance, there is always a shabby gallery
reserved for officials and for women, to which admittance is granted
only by the president of the court, to whom the proper management of the
courtroom belongs. The non-privileged public are compelled to stand in
the empty space between the door of the hall and the bar. This normal
appearance of all French law courts and assize-rooms was that of the
Criminal court of Troyes.

In April, 1806, neither the four judges nor the president (or
chief-justice) who made up the court, nor the public prosecutor, the
director of the jury, the commissary of the government, nor the sheriffs
or lawyers, in fact no one except the gendarmes, wore any robes or
other distinctive sign which might have relieved the nakedness of the
surroundings and the somewhat meagre aspect of the figures. The crucifix
was suppressed; its example was no longer held up before the eyes of
justice and of guilt. All was dull and vulgar. The paraphernalia
so necessary to excite social interest is perhaps a consolation to
criminals. On this occasion the eagerness of the public was what it has
ever been and ever will be in trials of this kind, so long as France
refuses to recognize that the admission of the public to the courts
involves publicity, and that the pub