I might indeed get hold of a lawyer who has studied the _circonstances atténuantes_, as we used to say at Paris; but what’s the good, when the stupid bench don’t understand them? Civilisation is at such a low ebb in this land of ours. Quite otherwise over there. I attended a trial in France ... a woman who had committed the _sottise_ of hacking her child to pieces, chopping it up small, and cooking it ... what further could you have? It would have been a bad look-out for her in this country. Over there, she simply had to take the precaution of providing _circonstances atténuantes_, ... and she got off all right. That’s what I call philanthropy—civilisation! Just look for civilisation _here_! there’s nothing of the sort. Everything is taken ill here. If your scales or your weights are not quite right, they take it ill of you! If you call a man a thief or a scoundrel, in the friendliest way in the world, and can’t produce your proofs on the spot, they take it ill of you! Just as if those were not the biggest scoundrels of all against whom nothing can be proved! If you happen to swear falsely, they take that ill too! Why, not long ago I heard of a man undergoing very unpleasant treatment in public, because he—it seems incredible—because he had set his own house on fire! Stupid nation this! Not the faintest notion of the universal rights of mankind! The house belonged to him; what business was it of people’s what he did with it? Why shouldn’t he make a bonfire of it as soon as smoke this “light brown”? (Good cigar, too!) Yes, they say, but ... his _next-door neighbour_! Stuff and nonsense! Am _I_ not to illuminate, because somebody else prefers to sit in darkness? If my next-door neighbour has cat’s eyes, he had better go and live somewhere else.
No, no,—that delicate feeling,—that tact,—that talent for making black white with all the facility in the world, and without fear of contradiction,—and above all, the glorious _circonstances atténuantes_,—_all these_ you find only in France!
Splendid invention, those _circonstances atténuantes_! They are the lightning-conductor of the Procureur du Roi’s wrath, as we used to say at Paris. They are galvanism applied to the Code Napoléon. They are ... in short, they are anything you please.