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Such was the sketch of "Human Justice," scratched hurriedly on paper, and placed at the service of Messrs. Boissec and Rochemorte. M. Emanuel read it over my shoulder. Waiting no comment, I curtsied to the trio, and withdrew. After school that day, M. Paul and I again met.
The essay was not remarkable at all; it only seemed remarkable, compared with the average productions of foreign school- girls; in an English establishment it would have passed scarce noticed. Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte had thought proper to question its genuineness, and insinuate a cheat; I was now to bear my testimony to the truth, and to be put to the torture of their examination.
Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte did not perceive this. They mistook my work for the work of a ripe scholar. They would not yet let me go: I must sit down and write before them. As I dipped my pen in the ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one of my judges began mincingly to apologize for the pain he caused.
These two fine, braided, mustachioed, sneering personages, were none other than dandy professors of the college Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte a pair of cold-blooded fops and pedants, sceptics, and scoffers. It seems that M. Paul had been rashly exhibiting something I had written something, he had never once praised, or even mentioned, in my hearing, and which I deemed forgotten.
"Nous agissons dans l'interet de la verite. Nous ne voulons pas vous blesser," said he. Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered, "Dictate, Monsieur." Rochemorte named this theme: "Human Justice." Human Justice! What was I to make of it? Blank, cold abstraction, unsuggestive to me of one inspiring idea; and there stood M. Emanuel, sad as Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his accusers.
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