"Who is Harpar? Who is Harpar? You
surely do not ask me that?"

"I do; such is my question."

"I must confess that you surprise me. You
ask me for information about yourself!"

"Oh, indeed! So that I am Harpar?"

"You can, of course, deny it. We are in a
measure prepared for that. The proofs of your
identity will be, however, forthcoming; not to
add, that it will be difficult to disprove the
offence."

"Ha, the offence! I'm really curious about
that. What is the offence with which I am
charged?"

"What I have been reading these two hours.
What I have recited with all the clearness,
brevity, and perspicuity that characterise our
imperial and royal legislation, making our code
at once the envy and admiration of all Europe."

"I'm sure of that. But, what have I done?"

"With what for a dulness-charged and much-
beclouded intellect are you afflicted," cried he,
" not to have followed the greatly-by-circumstances-
corroborated and in-various-ways-by-
proofs-brought-home narrative that I have already
read out?"

"I have not heard one word of it!"

"What a deplorable and all-the-more-therefore-
hopeless intelligence is yours! I will begin
it once more." And with a heavy sigh he turned
over the first pages of his manuscript.

"Nay, Herr Procurator," interposed I,
hastily. " I have the less claim to exact this
sacrifice on your part, that even when you
have rendered it, it will be all fruitless and
unprofitable. I am just recovering from a
severe illness. I am, as you have very acutely
remarked, a man of very narrow and limited
faculties in my best of moments, and I am now
still lower in the scale of intelligence. Were
you to read that lucid document till we were
both grey-headed, it would leave me just as
uninformed as to imputed crime as I now am."

"I perceive," said he, gravely. Then, turning
to his clerk, he bade him write down, " 'And
the so-called Harpar having duly heard and
with decorously-lent attention listened to the
foregoing act, did thereupon enter his plea of
mental incapacity and derangement.'"

"Nay, Herr Procturator, I would simply record
that, however open to follow some plain
narrative, the forms and subtleties of a legal
document only bewilder me."

"What for an ingeniously-worded and with-
artifice-cunningly-conceived excuse have we
here?" exclaimed he, indignantly. " Is it from
England, with her seventeen hundred and odd
volumes of an incomplete code, that the imperial
and royal government is to learn legislation?
You are charged with offences that are
known to every state of civilisation: highway
assault and molestation—attack with arms and
deadly implements, stimulated by base and long-
heretofore and with-bitterness-imagined plans of
vengeance on your countryman and former associate,
the so-named Rigges. From him, too,
proceeds the information as to your political
character, and the ever-to-be-deplored and only-
with-blood-expiated error of republicanism by
which you are actuated. This brief but not-
the-less-on-that-account lucid exposition, it is
my duty first to read out and then leave with
you. With all your from-a-wrong- impulse-proceeding
and a-spirit-of-opposition-suggested objections,
I have no wish nor duty to meddle. The
benign and ever-paternal rule under which we
live, gives even to the most-with-accusation-surrounded
and with-strong-presumption-implicated
prisoner, every facility of defence. Having read
and matured this indictment, you will, after a
week, make choice of an advocate."

"Am I to be confronted with my accuser?"

"I sincerely hope that the indecent spectacle
of insulting attack and offensive rejoinder thus
suggested, is unknown to the administration
of our law."

"How then can you be certain that I am the
man he accuses of having molested him?"

"You are not here to assail, nor I to defend,
the with-ages-consolidated and by-much-tact-
accumulated wisdom of our imperial and royal code."

"Might he not say, when he saw me, 'I never
set eyes on this man before?'"

He turned again to his clerk, and dictated
something of which I could but catch the concluding
words " And thereby imputing perjury
to the so-called Rigges."

It was all I could do to repress an outburst
of anger at this unjustifiable system of inference,
but I did restrain myself, and merely said, " I
impute nothing, Herr Procurator; I simply
suggest a possible case, that everything suffered
by Rigges was inflicted by some other than I."

"If you had accomplices, name them," said
he, solemnly.

This overcame all my prudent resolves. I
was nowise prepared for such a perversity of
misconception, and losing all patience and all
respect for his authority, I burst out into a most
intemperate attack on Austria, her code, her
system, her ignorant indifference to all European
enlightenment, her bigoted adherence to
forms either unmeaning or pernicious, winding
up all with a pleasant prediction that in a few
short years the world would have seen the last
of this stolid and unteachable empire.

Instead of deigning a reply, he merely bent
down to the table, and I saw by the movement
of his lips and the rapid course of the clerk's
pen, that my statement was being reduced to
writing.

""When you have completed that," said I,
gravely, " I have some further observations to
record."

"In a moment—in a moment," patiently responded
the procurator; " we have only got to
' the besotted stupidity of her pretentious officials.'"

The calm quietude of his manner as he said
this threw me into a fit of laughter, which lasted
several minutes.

"There, there," said I, "that will do; I will