“Condemn?” cried Agis; “wasn’t the evidence very weak?”
“Ay,” snorted Polus, “very weak, and the wretch pleaded piteously, setting his wife and four little ones weeping on the stand. But we are resolved. ‘You are boiling a stone—your plea’s no profit,’ thought we. Our hearts vote ‘guilty,’ if our heads say ‘innocent.’ One mustn’t discourage honest informers. What’s a patriot on a jury for if only to acquit? Holy Father Zeus, but there’s a pleasure in dropping into the voting-urn the black bean which condemns!”
“Athena keep us, then, from litigation,” murmured Clearchus; while Crito opened his fat lips to ask, “And what adjourns the courts?”
“A meeting of the assembly, to be sure. The embassy’s come back from Delphi with the oracle we sought about the prospects of the war.”
“Then Themistocles will speak,” observed the potter; “a very important meeting.”
“Very important,” choked the juror, fishing a long piece of garlic from his wallet and cramming it into his mouth with both hands. “What a noble statesman Themistocles is! Only young Democrates will ever be like him.”
“Democrates?” squeaked out Crito.
“Why, yes. Almost as eloquent as Themistocles. What zeal for democracy! What courage against Persia! A Nestor, I say, in wisdom—”
Agis gave a whistle.
“A Nestor, perhaps. Yet if you knew, as I do, how some of his nights pass,—dice, Rhodian fighting-cocks, dancing-girls, and worse things,—”