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that I am speaking. One-we have already considered it-is the absence of sufficient and authoritative criticism; and as a complement to this, the likelihood of sinking more and more into a groove as time goes on, the probability that our own opinions will become more and more ineradicable, more unquestionably accepted by ourselves every year that passes over our heads, every time, indeed, that we utter them to others, who are expected to listen to them with the appearance, at any rate, of acquiescence. Another difficulty is that, finding we have thus almost unawares slidden into the position of moral instructors, we cannot, as in other branches of learning, revert desperately for help and equipment to what we ourselves learnt in our youth. For if we do we shall obviously find that most of the maxims we then acquired, that now will spring most readily to the memory and the lips, have been in most cases formulated by the older for the benefit of the young, and cannot always be used as a safe handrail and efficient. guide by those who are not in the subordinate relation to others. Take, for example, that portion of the Catechism which recites "My duty towards my neighbor," and which inculcates submission, obedience, respect, being meant necessarily for those of the age when the Catechism is commonly learnt. But "My duty towards my neighbor," for the man and woman arrived at maturity, must, equally necessarily, take on another aspect. The maxims then followed should not, and cannot, be those prescribed in the Catechism, although they should be the counterpart of these, and render their execution possible. Since it is enjoined on the young that they should love, honor and succor their parents, submit themselves to their governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters, order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, it is evident that pastors, masters, par

ents,

betters, should bear themselves in a way that may elicit and justify such love, honor and respect. It is not easy to achieve this successfully. But the difficulty would certainly be lessened if we were quite clear that we wanted to achieve it, and had the necessity of doing so, the deliberate purpose, before our minds every day and at every turn.

But what of those who have not this incentive, who are not surrounded by a younger generation to whom they must serve as examples and guides? are these more likely or less likely to make a success of middle age? They should in one way have greater facilities for doing so, for their attention can be concentrated on themselves instead of others. But, on the other hand, having no constant claims on them from another generation, they may become unduly absorbed in themselves and the contemplation of their own advantages, or their own difficulties, or perhaps of both, to the exclusion of those of other people. The difficulties incidental to this time-I am speaking, of course, of average mortals, not of the exceptional of either sex who may have attained to marked distinction and achieved permanent successare likely to press more hardly upon women than on men. Most men in these days, when the capacity of public service in one form or another appears to persist so long, glide on into the years without any very perceptible change of attitude. A man of fifty-five, say, is probably continuing with credit to himself the bread-winning or famewinning calling which has been his since he arrived at manhood, and taking part in the active work of existence; and, if he is in fairly good health, is probably quite pleased with the world still, although life may have been for him a succession of compromises with fate regarding what he had hoped, what he attempted and what he has achieved.

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But even if the compromise has been a hard one, he may still bear himself bravely, provided he does not go about the world and complain of the way destiny has dealt with him. But a woman? what of her, if she have not some special occupation which interests and absorbs her? The majority of her sex too often find themselves somewhat stranded in life at this time, when their children, if they had any, are independent, their own ordinary occupations thereby lessened, their youthful pastimes are gone, and they find themselves with less mental and physical energy than of yore, called upon to put something else in the place of the occupations they have lost. What then? Or what of those who have either not married, or not had any thing special to do, and now find their hold on desultory social intercourse lessened, and themselves not indispensable to the community? Then it is that many women who had tried misguidedly to go through life without a hobby struggle desperately to create for themselves under these unfavorably altered conditions resources that they ought to have thought of years before. They develop a feverish activity, and try to fill their time with occupations which are probably laughed at instead of sympathized with by their neighbor whose tastes may lie another way-so he thinks they are not worth doing, according to the criterion brought to bear on other people's pursuits. But it is nothing to laugh at. It is something to weep over. The spectacle of human beings who waste years of delightful possibilities, consumed by unavailing, smouldering regrets which they have not courage

The Nineteenth Century.

to stamp out and turn their back upon, pitiful souls who well may say with Dante's melancholy band:

senza speme vivemo in disio

of all conditions surely the most miserable. But I have not space enough to enter upon all there would be to say if we began to discuss the destiny of the innumerable women who, arrived at this stage, allow themselves to be crushed under a weight of negative misfortune. Secretly mourning for the things they have lost, instead of steadfastly looking upon those they retain, they go through the world surrounded by darkness instead of by light, and no place is the brighter for their presence. And yet to try to increase the world's sum of joy and light-heartedness would, in default of another career, be no mean mission, no mean achievement; it might well, as a last resource, satisfy as a substitute for the more dazzling exploits which we once meant to place to our credit. A modern philosopher has said that the possibilities of usefulness of every man or woman who has tried to be of use increase with each decade, as their sphere of influence becomes wider and their experience more helpful to themselves and others. This thought may well comfort those of us who have left our youth behind; for it is an earnest life that in some of its nobler aspects becomes more and more worth living as it goes on. To discuss as many have done, if it be worth living at all, seems to me a fruitless query; whether it is or not, it is the only way we know of spending the time. Let us make the best of it.

Florence Bell.

A JUDGE'S DILEMMA.*

To M. le Conseiller de Cassation Letellier:

I thank you, Monsieur, for having kindly entrusted to me the dossier that was in your possession and of which the following are extracts.

Respectfully,

Masson-Forestier.

On Monday, the 13th of April, 1889, between nine and ten o'clock in the evening, a robbery was committed in the railway station at Barneville under unusually peculiar circumstances. The cash box, that is, the box that contained the station receipts, the box that was sent to Paris twice a week, disappeared from the cashier's office, during the cashier's absence. The facts of the case were such that they left no room for doubt that the thief was an employee of the company, and a formal investigation cast grave suspicions on the assistant-stationmaster, Sénéchal, who had been seen in the cashier's office at the very hour in which the crime must have been committed.

Upon Sénéchal's arrest, an inquiry was at once set on foot. Ably conducted by M. Carpentier, a magistrate of ability and long experience, thoroughly versed, moreover, in the conduct of criminal cases, it ended in the presentation of a case so overwhelming that the Chambre des Mises en Accusation of Caen decidedly unanimously to remand Sénéchal to the Court of Assizes.

The criminal session does not open until the month of June. At this time M. Carpentier, having reached the age limit was placed on the retired list. He had left Caen and returned to Cotentin, his native place.

*Translated for The Living Age from the French of M. Masson-Forestier. By Annie W. Ayer and Helen T. Slate.

The evening of the day on which Sénéchal was to appear before the Court of Assizes, the President, M. de Maucourcy, received unexpectedly from M. Carpentier the following document entitled "A few facts in the Sénéchal case," a document which, to judge from the tremulous and hurried handwriting, had apparently been written under the stress of strong emotion.

M. de Maucourcy was a man of keen intelligence, a trifle inclined to be sceptical, but a conscientious magistrate; and, in spite of the fatigue entailed on a man of his years by the reading of such a document, he passed the greater part of the night in examining it with the most careful attention.

Document No. 1.

The

"It was on April 13th, that the cash box was stolen, and on the 16th that a fisherman, while drawing in his eelpots, found the box in the river. It was partly hidden among the reeds. fisherman struck at it with an oar and saw that it was a small, oak box with iron clamps, the cover of which had been broken in. He placed it in his boat and carried it to the mayor of his commune, who forwarded it to me in charge of the gendarmes. Some one observed at the time that the box smelt as though it had lain in a hen house. In the investigation which I conducted, everything went to prove that the thief was the assistant-stationmaster, Sénéchal. The proofs of his guilt were overwhelming. I had been the first to accuse him, then I was seized with doubt and paused; finally, returning to the charge, I renewed my accusations more persistently than before. My report once presented, I was assailed by fresh doubts. The more I examined

into his case, the more convinced I was that I might be mistaken. To-day I am almost positive that I have committed an error! My conscience urges me to tell you this and to explain how I have arrived at the conviction that Sénéchal is not the real culprit.

And tomorrow he will appear before the Assizes; tomorrow he will be confronted by the whole formidable structure of my arraignment. You will doubtless make skilful use of the material with which I have provided you; you will bring against this man-it is your right as President, your duty, indeed-all that has been unsatisfactory and at times strange in certain replies he has made to me. But, in truth, I ask myself if I have not myself been open to reproach. "The worst of errors," Bossuet has said,, "is to see things as one wishes them to be." Have I not allowed myself, as have so many juges d'instruction, to interpret too partially certain replies, being convinced beforehand of the prisoner's guilt?

In any case, I say to you in all humility, monsieur le président, that a species of remorse has taken possession of me.

Therefore, I must confess to you that the sole object of this document is to combat the conclusions of my own report, that it may induce you to aid the jury in the acquittal of this man, and, at the same time, to unmask the true criminal. With God's help I am sure that the truth will one day be made known.

I shall then have the inestimable satisfaction, after a life humbly devoted to the service of the law, of having been able, although removed from my office, to render to justice a signal service in preventing a lamentable mistake. I trust that in the step I have taken you will not see indications-let us call things by their right name—of a weakening of my faculties. Though my body has become feeble enough, my

mind is still strong; it does not wander, I assure you.

In the first place, it is necessary to understand the topography of the place where the robbery was committed.

Imagine a rectangular building, the east side of which faces the road, the west side the track, and of which the shorter north and south sides are intersected by gates leading to the platform. Let us draw a smaller square between the waiting-room on one side and the entrance and baggage-room on the other, communicating by three doors with the railway platform. This small square covers a space of some seventy metres, which we will divide into three sections. In the upper section is the office of the stationmaster, in the lower the factor's office; the intermediate section, and here is a most interesting point, is divided into two; first, the ticket office which is entered from the vestibule, then the cashier's office. This office and the ticket office, then, are back to back. A glass partition separates them, but this partition does not open.

At the time that the box was stolen from the cashier's office, there was at the station only the stationmaster, Dubuc, the assistant-stationmaster, Sénéchal, the ticket agent,Mme. Engelbach, and two porters, Grenielle and Langevin. The other stationmaster, the dayassistant, Bastard, had left at seven that evening, and Buisson, the cashier, had gone home. As to the last two, their presence at their respective homes which are, moreover, at a long distance from the station, is testified to by the most trustworthy witnesses.

If it is certain that only an employee of the company could be sufficiently familiar with the station to find the box in total darkness and dispose of it in a few seconds, the conclusion must inevitably be that the author of the crime was one of the men who were on duty at that moment.

It was five minutes of ten; train No. 87 from Mezidon, which had been in for ten minutes, was about to start when the conductor of the train approached the assistant-stationmaster saying, in a tone of surprise:

"It is strange that I cannot find the cash box. . . . I went to your room to get the key, and I was about to put it in the door of the cashier's office when I found that it opened by simply turning the knob. I entered. I opened the drawer of the desk-the drawer was empty."

"That is strange," said the stationmaster, who went at once to the office, struck a match, and called loudly to one of the porters: "Langevin, go to Buisson's house and see if he took the cash box home with him by any chance. Hurry. No. 87 is being delayed. shall be reprimanded."

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Langevin went at once to the house of the cashier, whom he found at dinner. Buisson hastened to the station in alarm.

"I have not got it," he said; "I put it in the drawer as usual, when I left at half-past eight. There were nearly 4000 francs in it."

There could be no longer room for doubt; the box had been stolen.

The head stationmaster, M. Dubuc, was notified at once and began a minute investigation of the doings of the various employees between half-past eight and ten o'clock.

He began with the ticket agent, but no suspicion could be attached to her. She never enters the inner part of the station, and the partition which is of glass and very solid was intact. The head stationmaster himself was open to no suspicion. He was able to prove that at the time of the robbery he was dining with his family and a neighboring farmer. The conductor of 87 had not left his engineer and fireman for a single moment during the time the

There

train had been in the station. remained only the assistant-stationmaster, Sénéchal, and the two porters, Grenielle and Langevin. These three had been sitting together until about twenty minutes of ten, in the luggageroom, smoking, while Sénéchal read aloud from a Paris newspaper. At twenty minutes of ten the electric gong announced the approach of No. 87; each went about his respective duties, Langevin to set the switches, Grenielle to see to the lamps, and the assistant-stationmaster to the waiting-room to see if there were any passengers, although there were rarely any for that train.

Three or four minutes later, Langevin met Sénéchal near the door of the cashier's office.

"Ah! it is you, Monsieur Sénéchal,” he said; "I came to tell you that the ticket agent said she had heard a noise in the cashier's office."

"The cashier's office," answered the other, unconcernedly; "I did not hear anything; I was in the waiting-room, but there was no one there. Buisson left at half-past eight; you see, it is all dark."

And, taking the lantern from the porter, he held it aloft, lighting up the interior of the office. "You see there is no one in there," he said.

"The ticket agent must have been mistaken," said Langevin, shrugging his shoulders.

These, Monsieur le President, are the sole facts that were known and verified that night by the head stationmaster, the only ones, therefore, that are certain. I consider that they are more to be depended upon than those which developed later.

To continue. The following day, the neighbors of Grenielle, the porter, testified that in the early morning they had heard a noise near Grenielle's house. They had looked out and had

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