Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/128

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uniform and in mufti, spurred and sabred menace going through the hall. The law was laughed at with amazing cynicism by these booted warriors. They refused to reply to the questions put to them, and threatened the civilians who presumed to differ from them with the horror of "a butchery." They held the field with unexampled effrontery, and the terrorised jury spoke at their bidding. You must go far back in the Middle Ages to find another such tale of wholesale assassinations, perjuries, forgeries, cynical traffic with justice, insolent manipulation of documents, suppressed correspondence, distorted telegrams, bribed evidence, strident vituperation and manifestation of despotism, the more extraordinary by the multiplicity of despots; and so delighted was the befooled populace by this parade of rabid defiance and booted revolt against national tribunals (had the magistrates been honest and the jury courageous, and both held out in the performance of their duty, the suffrages of the people would just as likely have been on their side, since the successfulness of success is proverbial) that Vive l'armée came to mean everything on earth, from the servant-maid's traditional love of a uniform, the street Arab's passion for the blare of a trumpet, the sentimental citizen's yearning for Alsace and Lorraine, and the longing of Imperialist, Royalist, and every other form of fractious opponent