Last month I met Abbé Mignot out among the rocks of Deux Fontaines. He sat with knitted brows at the foot of a bush, and nervously turned the pages of his breviary. He was evidently making a desperate effort to fasten down his wandering attention. He did not notice me, and had not my dog run up to him, I should have turned and walked away, to avoid disturbing him in his lonely struggle. When he saw me he rose, afraid of having been caught betraying something of himself. I held out my hand in friendship, and this time I would gladly have stopped for a talk had I not seemed to read in his eyes an entreaty to pass on without speaking. I obeyed the silent appeal. But yielding to an obscure need-- "_Monsieur le curé_," I said, "you ought to be careful. There are snakes among those stones. You must have been warned before?" "Yes, I know," he answered in a muffled voice. "This place is infested with vipers--most pernicious beasts, _Monsieur_. I hope that on your side you will be able to guard against them." XIII MASTER BAPTIST, JUDGE What kind of justice did Saint Louis dispense under his oak tree? History does not tell us that he was a doctor of law. Everything leads us to suppose that he owed extremely little if anything at all to Papinian, Ulpian, or Tribonian. He was, of course, a Saint, and those among us chosen by Providence to make Its Supreme Will known receive appropriate inspiration from on high. King Solomon, like other Asiatic kings, who are by their people regarded as mouthpieces of divine wisdom, consulted no text when he spoke the famous judgment upon which his glory still rests. Jews or Christians, the ancient leaders of the people judged in equity, and without too great difficulty arrived at an approximate justice, superior to the "judgments of God," which had too often what looked like the iniquitous unfairness of chance. Codes, by their inflexible rules applied to every case, have overthrown the ancient order, under which an arbitrary procedure fitted the law to each individual transgression. Laws and judges have since become more flexible, they would otherwise be intolerable, but they are still too rigid to bend felicitously to the modifications by which natural right might be promoted. In addition to which, gratuitous "justice" not infrequently ruins the person seeking it.