The conversation naturally turned upon the monstrous verdict of the previous day. The corporation-attorney said that he was glad he had declined to defend the case. He could well imagine the surprise of Landolin's counsel when his client was acquitted. Of course, in such cases, a lawyer feels bound to make use of all possible dialectic arts and strategies, but still, when successful, he must feel the recoil of the gun.
The school-teacher, whom but few knew to be the editor of the weekly paper, The Forest Messenger, complained in a disheartened tone that this verdict of the overbearing farmers would necessarily intensify the hate existing between the different classes; for the poor man felt that he had no rights. It was high time that the choice of jurymen should no longer depend upon the length of a man's tax-list.
The attorney coincided with him, but went even farther, and asserted that it was an old prejudice of liberalism, that the ordinary mind could render a just verdict.
The judge nodded to him, and he continued, somewhat vehemently: "I now understand the legend of Medusa. The uneducated class is such a head. If a man should look into its face, he would turn into stone before its horrid visage, so wild, so malevolent, so false, so furious. Our much vaunted German nation is not yet ripe, either for universal suffrage, or for the right of sitting on a jury. Indeed, since we have obtained what we have so long and ardently desired, the German wave in the tide of morality is sinking away. Our German people are not so great as we believed and hoped."
The judge earnestly protested against this assertion, and insisted that although there were undoubtedly deplorable indications, still the wave was beginning to rise again.
The physician, who still clung to the old ideal of his student days--an ideal always mingled with a profound hatred of Metternich--came bravely to the judge's assistance, by declaring that the influence of the profligate times of Metternich is still felt; for our people persist in the belief that everything that our rulers propose to do is wrong and tyrannical; and applaud when the law is evaded, or a criminal slips through without punishment.
In conclusion the physician could not refrain from giving the lawyer, who, while he really had a contempt for the people, belonged to the so-called radical wing of the liberty party, to understand that his party was greatly to blame for the disorganization of the popular mind, by its carping depreciation of the great and good things which had actually been accomplished.
The clergyman agreed that the foundation of all the mischief lay in the weakening of religious belief; but the schoolmaster was bold enough to assert that in the boasted days of unshaken faith there was much more wickedness in the world than now.
The discussion was apparently about to be taken up with the subject of religion, which was strictly forbidden in the Casino. But the Protestant minister's timid, quiet wife, happily turned the conversation, by asking, during a slight pause:
"Are there not more offenders who are undetected than are ever brought to justice?"