CHAPTER VII
The Friar's Testimony
In a criminal trial in the states of His Holiness the Pope, there is
none of that absolute and inflexible adherence to certain rigid
forms and rules which gives to many of the proceedings of our courts
that character of an inevitable destiny-like march which is so
dramatic in its operations--that sense of the presence there of a
power greater than that of the greatest of the men concerned in the
administration of it, which constitutes on large element in an
Englishman's respect for the law. At times this automatic power,
which has been thus created Faust-like, by reason of the
impossibility of pre-adapting its mechanism to the exigences of
every case, works to unforseen and undesired ends--sometimes even to
absurd ones. And, with thinkers of a certain phase of modern
thought, it has been a favourite taunt against the average British
mind, that it rather delights in the contemplation of such abnormal
workings of the great automatic law in which it has created. Some
manifest mistake or error has occurred. The man supposed to be
murdered walks into court; but it is a minute too late; the verdict
has been given--the sentence pronounced. All the court judges,
witnesses, counsel--look at each other in dismay; the great law
automaton cannot be made to swerve in its path by any power there.
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