[The Usher makes his usual promenade.
J. N. You have been convicted by a jury of your countrymen of stealing three loaves of bread; and I do not see how in the face of the evidence they could have come to any other verdict. Convicted of such a serious offence, this is not the time and place to reproach you with other misconduct; and yet I could almost regret that it is not possible to put you once more in the dock, and try you for conspiracy and incitement to riot; as in my own mind I have no doubt that you are in collusion with the ruffianly revolutionists, who, judging from their accent, are foreigners of a low type, and who, while this case has been proceeding, have been stimulating their bloodstained souls to further horrors by the most indecent verbal violence. And I must here take the opportunity of remarking that such occurrences could not now be occurring, but for the ill-judged leniency of even a Tory Government in permitting that pest of society the unrespectable foreigner to congregate in this metropolis.
A Voice. What do they do with you, you blooming old idiot, when you goes abroad and waddles through the Loover?
J. N. Another of them! another of those scarcely articulate foreigners! This is a most dangerous plot! Officer, arrest everybody present except the officials. I will make an example of everybody: I will commit them all.
Mr. H. (leaning over to Judge). I don’t see how it can be done, my lord. Let it alone: there’s a Socialist prisoner coming next; you can make him pay for all.
J. N. Oh! there is, is there? All right—all right. I’ll go and get a bit of lunch (offering to rise).
Clerk. Beg pardon, my lord, but you haven’t sentenced the prisoner.
J. N. Oh, ah! Yes. Oh, eighteen months’ hard labour.
M. P. Six months for each loaf that I didn’t steal! Well,
God help the poor in a free country! Won’t you save all further trouble by hanging me, my lord? Or if you won’t hang me, at least hang my children: they’ll live to be a nuisance to you else.