“Might he not say, when he saw me, 'I never set eyes on this man before'?”
He turned again to his clerk, and dictated something of which I could but catch the concluding words, “And thereby imputing perjury to the so-called Rigges.”
It was all I could do to repress an outburst of anger at this unjustifiable system of inference, but I did restrain myself, and merely said, “I impute nothing, Herr Procurator; I simply suggest a possible case, that everything suffered by Rigges was inflicted by some other than I.”
“If you had accomplices, name them,” said he, solemnly.
This overcame all my prudent resolves. I was nowise prepared for such a perversity of misconception, and, losing all patience and all respect for his authority, I burst out into a most intemperate attack on Austria, her code, her system, her ignorant indifference to all European enlightenment, her bigoted adherence to forms either unmeaning or pernicious, winding up all with a pleasant prediction that in a few short years the world would have seen the last of this stolid and unteachable empire.
Instead of deigning a reply, he merely bent down to the table, and I saw by the movement of his lips, and the rapid course of the clerk's pen, that my statement was being reduced to writing.
“When you have completed that,” said I, gravely, “I have some further observations to record.”
“In a moment,—in a moment,” patiently responded the procurator; “we have only got to 'the besotted stupidity of her pretentious officials.'”
The calm quietude of his manner, as he said this, threw me into a fit of laughter which lasted several minutes.
“There, there,” said I, “that will do; I will keep the remainder of my remarks for another time and place.”