The Chief of the Government at the time was a peasant called Robin Mielleux, a man pleasant to the rich and powerful, but hard towards the poor, a man of small courage and ignorant of his own interests.  In a public declaration he guaranteed Maubec’s innocence and honour, and presented the seven hundred Pyrotists:  to the criminal courts where they were condemned, as libellers, to imprisonment, to enormous fines, and to all the damages that were claimed by their innocent victim.

It seemed as if Pyrot was destined to remain for ever shut in the cage on which the ravens perched.  But all the Penguins being anxious to know and prove that this Jew was guilty, all the proofs brought forward were found not to be good, while some of them were also contradictory.  The officers of the Staff showed zeal but lacked prudence.  Whilst Greatauk kept an admirable silence, General Panther made inexhaustible speeches and every morning demonstrated in the newspapers that the condemned man was guilty.  He would have done better, perhaps, if he had said nothing.  The guilt was evident and what is evident cannot be demonstrated.  So much reasoning disturbed people’s minds; their faith, though still alive, became less serene.  The more proofs one gives a crowd the more they ask for.

Nevertheless the danger of proving too much would not have been great if there had not been in Penguinia, as there are, indeed, everywhere, minds framed for free inquiry, capable of studying a difficult question, and inclined to philosophic doubt.  They were few; they were not all inclined to speak, and the public was by no means inclined to listen to them.  Still, they did not always meet with deaf ears.  The great Jews, all the Israelite millionaires of Alca, when spoken to of Pyrot, said:  “We do not know the man”; but they thought of saving him.  They preserved the prudence to which their wealth inclined them and wished that others would be less timid.  Their wish was to be gratified.

IV.  COLOMBAN

Some weeks after the conviction of the seven hundred Pyrotists, a little, gruff, hairy, short-sighted man left his house one morning with a paste-pot, a ladder, and a bundle of posters and went about the streets pasting placards to the walls on which might be read in large letters:  Pyrot is innocent, Maubec is guilty.  He was not a bill-poster; his name was Colomban, and as the author of sixty volumes on Penguin sociology he was numbered among the most laborious and respected writers in Alca.  Having given sufficient thought to the matter and no longer doubting Pyrot’s innocence, he proclaimed it in the manner which he thought would be most sensational.  He met with no hindrance while posting his bills in the quiet streets, but when he came to the populous quarters, every time he mounted his ladder, inquisitive people crowded round him and, dumbfounded with surprise and indignation, threw at him threatening looks which