between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far
better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the
people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its
mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of
poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded,
by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.

When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance
to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed
day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's
arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its
form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated
solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king,
knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased
his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human
thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.

When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king,
surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state
on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him
opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the
amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the
inclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It
was the duty and the privilege of the person on trial to walk
directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open either
door he pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but
that of the aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If
he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the
fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which
immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a