Page:Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet and other profitable tales, 1915.djvu/216

 202 because justice is the ratification of all injustice that it reassures every one.

"A judge may be benevolent, for men are not all bad; the law cannot be benevolent because it is anterior to all ideas of benevolence. The changes which have been introduced into it down the ages have not altered its original character. Jurists have rendered it subtle, but they have left it barbaric. Its very ferocity causes it to be respected and regarded as august. Men are given to worship malevolent gods, and that which is not cruel seems to them not worth their adoration. The judged believe in the justice of laws. Their morality is that of the judges; both one and the other believe that a punished action is penal. In the police court or at the assizes I have often been touched to see how the accused and the judge agree perfectly in their ideas of good and evil. They have the same prejudices and a common morality."

"It cannot be otherwise," said Jean Marteau. "A poor creature who has stolen from a shop window a sausage or a pair of shoes has not on that account looked deeply and boldly into the very origin of law and the foundation of justice. And those who like ourselves are not afraid to behold in the origin of Codes a sanction