hands. It is almost needless to say that the judge, who was on the left
of the table, and who never once turned to the accused, or indeed to
anyone, was the only seated person. He was a young man, with fine
features, a good complexion, and a high intellectual brow, and had I
seen him under other circumstances, I should have thought him decidedly
prepossessing looking. He wore a black satin hat, a rich, blue brocade
robe, almost concealing his blue brocade trousers, and over this a
sleeved cloak of dark blue satin, lined with ermine fur. A look of
singular coldness and hauteur sat permanently on his face, over which a
flush of indescribable impatience sometimes passed. He is not of the
people, this lordly magistrate. He is one of the privileged literati.
His literary degrees are high and numerous. He has both place and
power. Little risk does he run of a review of his decisions or of an
appeal to the Emperor at Pekin. He spoke loud and with much rapidity
and emphasis, and often beat impatiently on the floor with his foot. He
used the mandarin tongue, and whether cognizant of the dialect of the
prisoners or not, he put all his questions through an interpreter, who
stood at his left, a handsomely dressed old man, who wore a gold chain
with a dependent ivory comb, with which while he spoke he frequently
combed a small and scanty gray mustache.

Notaries, attendants with scarlet-crowned hats, and a rabble of men and
boys, in front of whom we placed ourselves, stood down each side. The
open hall, though lofty, is shabby and extremely dirty, with an unswept
broken pavement, littered at one side with potsherds, and disfigured by
a number of more or less broken black pots as well as other rubbish,
making it look rather like a shed in an untidy nursery garden than an
imperial judgment-hall. On the pillars there are certain classical
inscriptions, one of which is said to be an exhortation to mercy.
Pieces of bamboo of different sizes are ranged against the south wall.