between life and death, within the next half hour. Their appearance
was the reverse of one likely to reconcile the unfortunate to the
severity of the law. They were seven or eight sitting on a raised
platform, with a long table in their front, covered with papers, with
what seemed to be the property taken from the condemned at the
moment--watches, purses, and trinkets; and among those piles, very
visibly the fragments of a dinner--plates and soups, with several
bottles of cognac and wine. Justice was so indefatigable in France,
that its ministers were forced to mingle all the functions of public
and private life together; and to be intoxicated in the act of passing
sentence of death was no uncommon event.

The judges of those sectional tribunals were generally ruffians of the
lowest description, who, having made themselves notorious by violence
and Jacobinism, had driven away the usual magistracy, and, under the
pretext of administering justice, were actually driving a gainful
trade in robbery of every kind. The old costume of the courts of law
was of course abjured; and the new civic costume, which was obviously
constructed on the principle of leaving the lands free for butchery,
and preserving the garments free from any chance of being disfigured
by the blood of the victim--for they were the perfection of savage
squalidness--was displayed _à la rigueur_ on the bench. A short coat
without sleeves, the shirt sleeves tucked up as for instant execution,
the neck open, no collar, fierce mustaches, a head of clotted hair,
sometimes a red nightcap stuck on one side, and sometimes a red
handkerchief tied round it as a temporary "bonnet de nuit"--for the
judges frequently, in drunkenness or fatigue, threw themselves on the
bench or the floor, and slept--exhibited the regenerated aspect of
Themis in the capital of the polished world.