“Lastly, I should point out that even though the jury had acquitted you—­a supposition that I cannot seriously entertain—­I should have felt it my duty to inflict a sentence hardly less severe than that which I must pass at present; for the more you had been found guiltless of the crime imputed to you, the more you would have been found guilty of one hardly less heinous—­I mean the crime of having been maligned unjustly.

“I do not hesitate therefore to sentence you to imprisonment, with hard labour, for the rest of your miserable existence.  During that period I would earnestly entreat you to repent of the wrongs you have done already, and to entirely reform the constitution of your whole body.  I entertain but little hope that you will pay attention to my advice; you are already far too abandoned.  Did it rest with myself, I should add nothing in mitigation of the sentence which I have passed, but it is the merciful provision of the law that even the most hardened criminal shall be allowed some one of the three official remedies, which is to be prescribed at the time of his conviction.  I shall therefore order that you receive two tablespoonfuls of castor oil daily, until the pleasure of the court be further known.”

When the sentence was concluded the prisoner acknowledged in a few scarcely audible words that he was justly punished, and that he had had a fair trial.  He was then removed to the prison from which he was never to return.  There was a second attempt at applause when the judge had finished speaking, but as before it was at once repressed; and though the feeling of the court was strongly against the prisoner, there was no show of any violence against him, if one may except a little hooting from the bystanders when he was being removed in the prisoners’ van.  Indeed, nothing struck me more during my whole sojourn in the country, than the general respect for law and order.

CHAPTER XII:  MALCONTENTS

I confess that I felt rather unhappy when I got home, and thought more closely over the trial that I had just witnessed.  For the time I was carried away by the opinion of those among whom I was.  They had no misgivings about what they were doing.  There did not seem to be a person in the whole court who had the smallest doubt but that all was exactly as it should be.  This universal unsuspecting confidence was imparted by sympathy to myself, in spite of all my training in opinions so widely different.  So it is with most of us:  that which we observe to be taken as a matter of course by those around us, we take as a matter of course ourselves.  And after all, it is our duty to do this, save upon grave occasion.