Ministere
Public claimed one of them for the guillotine, but the Versailles jury
gave him all three.

As to the Parisian jury, its composition is naturally more complex, but
its results are said to be equally unreliable. Its deliberations are not
affected by any spirit of caste or class, since these distinctions are
not sharply enough defined; "but it is at the mercy of a fine talker.
This will not be the avocat, rarely listened to, nor even the Avocat
general, offensive in the eyes of the Parisian _frondeur_ as the
representative of authority. No; it is among its own members that the
jury will select this veritable chief, some reasoner with abundant and
facile speech, discovering in everything concealed meanings, hidden
allusions, and all the more dangerous for the good sense of his
colleagues that he has an elegant talent for paradoxes."

The Parisian jury is also, it appears, peculiarly under the influence of
the fashions and customs of the day, no matter what they may be. For
several years it was almost impossible to secure a verdict of conviction
in the so-called "passionate dramas;" the heroines of vitriol and the
revolver passed with impunity before these complaisant juries. The
Parquet was obliged to withdraw most of these cases from trial by jury
and send them to one of the Chambres of the Tribunal Correctionnel,
which did not fail to do them justice. The notoriety, the celebrity, of
a case have also a great effect upon these citizen jurors. If a crime
has been committed on some fete-day, or in the midst of a ministerial
crisis, the twelve jurors take into favorable consideration all the
extenuating circumstances and render a verdict of acquittal. If, on the
contrary, the crime has attracted much popular attention, been exploited
in the daily papers, with portraits of the accused, of his victim, etc.,
then is the condemnation to death inevitable. "The Parisian jury is
nothing but a great child whom it is necessary to keep in
leading-strings and to watch very closely."

One of the most picturesque and characteristic features in the train of
justice, one in which the French themselves have always taken a lively,
though a professedly disparaging, interest,--as befits a military
nation,--is the black-robed multitude of _avocats_, the attorneys, the
lawyers. The nature of their profession, their professional costumes,
certain peculiarities of whisker and absence of moustache, all those
qualities which, in all co