ir of the people of
which their nation and country is formed, a child of eight years, of
rare precociousness, as intelligent as he is good, and of a gentle and
winning expression. Look at the other figure alongside of him, his fist
raised and with insults on his lips, with a hang-dog face, bloated with
brandy, titular governor, official preceptor, and absolute master of
this child, the cobbler Simon, malignant, foul-mouthed, mean in every
way, forcing him to become intoxicated, starving him, preventing him
from sleeping, thrashing him, and who, obeying orders, instinctively
visits on him all his brutality and corruption that he may pervert,
degrade and deprave him.[41154]--In the Palais de Justice, midway
between the tower of the Temple and the prison in the rue de Sevres,
an almost similar contrast, transposing the merits and demerits, daily
brings together in opposition the innocent with the vile. There are days
when the contrast, still more striking, seats criminals on the judges'
bench and judges on the bench of criminals. On the first and second
of Floreal, the old representatives and trustees of liberty under the
monarchy, twenty-five magistrates of the Paris and Toulouse parliaments,
many of them being eminent intellects of the highest culture and
noblest character, embracing the greatest historical names of the French
magistracy,--Etienne Pasquier, Lefevre d'Ormesson, Mole de Champlatreux,
De Lamoignon, de Malesherbes,--are sent to the guillotine[41155] by the
judges and juries familiar to us, assassins or brutes who do not take
the trouble, or who have not the capacity, to give proper color to their
sentences. M. de Malesherbes exclaims, after reading his indictment, "If
that were only common-sense!"--In effect those who pronounce judgment
are, by their own admission, "substantial jurymen, good sans-culottes,
natural people." And such a nature! One of these, Trenchard, an
Auvergnat carpenter, portrays himself accurately in the following note
addressed to his wife before the trial comes on:

"If you are not alone, and the companion can work, you may come, my
dear, and see the twenty-four gentlemen condemned, all of them former
presidents or councillors in the parliaments of Toulouse and Paris. I
recommend you to bring something along with you (to eat), it will
be three hours before we finish. I embrace you, my dear friend and
wife."[41156]

In the same court, Lavoisier, the founder and organizer of chemistry,