“I do not agree with you, Monsieur,” said the other, drinking a little gulp of wine. “All the gothic barbarity has been pared away from our laws and customs, and justice is to-day restrained and humane to excess. Punishment is exactly proportioned to crime, and you see thieves hanged, murderers broken on the wheel, traitors torn by four horses, atheists, sorcerers, and sodomites burnt, coiners boiled alive; in all which criminal law exhibits extreme moderation and all possible mildness.” “Monsieur, in all times judges have believed themselves to be benevolent, equitable, and gentle. In the gothic ages of St. Louis, and even of Charlemagne, they admired their own benignity, which appears to us to-day as savage. I divine that, in their turn, our sons will judge us as savage, and that they will find still something more to pare away from the tortures and punishments which we inflict.” “Monsieur, you are not speaking as a magistrate. Torture is necessary to extract confessions unobtainable by gentle means. As to punishments, they are reduced to what is necessary to assure safety of their life and goods to citizens.” “You acknowledge then, Monsieur, that justice has for its object not what is just, but what is useful, and that it is inspired only by the interests and prejudices of peoples. Nothing is more true, and faults are punished not in proportion to the malice attached to them, but in view of the harm they cause, or which it is believed they cause, to society in general. Thus, coiners are put into a copper of boiling water, although, in reality, there is little malice in striking false coins. But the public, and financiers in particular, suffer a marked damage therefrom. It is this loss for which they avenge themselves with pitiless cruelty. Thieves are hanged, less for the perversity that lies in taking bread, and clothes, which is, by the way, excessively small, than for the reason of the natural attachment men have for their possessions. It is expedient to restore human justice to its true reason—which is the material interest of men, and to disengage it from all high philosophy—with which it pompously and hypocritically veils itself.” “Monsieur,” replied the little official, “I do not understand you. It appears to me that justice is the more equitable the more useful it is, and this usefulness itself, which makes you disdain it, ought to render it august and sacred to you.” “You do not understand me,” said my good master. “Monsieur,” said the little official, “I notice that you are drinking nothing. Your wine is good if I may judge by the colour of it. May I not taste it?” It is true that for the first time in his life my good master had left some wine at the bottom of the bottle. He poured it into the little official’s glass.