when the most famous Great Seal under the Restoration avenged the
oversights heaped on this modest and uncomplaining man by the Chief
Justices of the Empire. After being a supernumerary for twelve years,
M. Popinot would no doubt die a puisne judge of the Court of the
Seine.

To account for the obscure fortunes of one of the superior men of the
legal profession, it is necessary to enter here into some details
which will serve to reveal his life and character, and which will, at
the same time, display some of the wheels of the great machine known
as Justice. M. Popinot was classed by the three Presidents who
successively controlled the Court of the Seine under the category of
possible judges, the stuff of which judges are made. Thus classified,
he did not achieve the reputation for capacity which his previous
labors had deserved. Just as a painter is invariably included in a
category as a landscape painter, a portrait painter, a painter of
history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public consisting of
artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who, out of envy, or critical
omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and
all, that there are ganglions in every brain--a narrow judgment which
the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins
with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's
fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of
work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal
common, distinguish two elements in every case--law and equity. Equity
is the outcome of facts, law is the application of principles to
facts. A man may be right in equity but wrong in law, without any
blame to the judge. Between his conscience and the facts there is a
whole gulf of determining reasons unknown to the judge, but which
condemn or legitimatize the act. A judge is not God; the duty is to