[154] - In the
Palais de Justice, midway between the tower of the Temple and the
prison in the rue de S?vres, an almost similar contrast, transposing
the merits and demerits, daily brings together in opposition the
innocent with the vile. There are days when the contrast, still more
striking, seats criminals on the judges' bench and judges on the bench
of criminals. On the first and second of Flor?al, the old
representatives and trustees of liberty under the monarchy, twenty-
five magistrates of the Paris and Toulouse parliaments, many of them
being eminent intellects of the highest culture and noblest character,
embracing the greatest historical names of the French magistracy, -
Etienne Pasquier, Lef?vre d'Ormesson, Mol? de Champlatreux, De
Lamoignon, de Malesherbes, - are sent to the guillotine[155] by the
judges and juries familiar to us, assassins or brutes who do not take
the trouble, or who have not the capacity, to give proper color to
their sentences. M. de Malesherbes exclaims, after reading his
indictment, " If that were only common-sense!" - In effect those who
pronounce judgment are, by their own admission, "substantial jurymen,
good sans-culottes, natural people.
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