The silk-gownsmen, as soon as he appears, fade to
the semblance of juniors, of lawyers' clerks, of jurymen, of oneself.
Always, indeed, in any public place devoted to some special purpose,
one finds it hard to differentiate the visitors, hard to credit them
with any private existence. Cast your eye around the tables of a
cafe': how subtly similar all the people seem! How like a swarm of
gregarious insects, in their unity of purpose and of aspect! Above
all, how homeless! Cast your eye around the tables of a casino's
gambling-room. What an uniform and abject herd, huddled together with
one despondent impulse! Here and there, maybe, a person whom we know
to be vastly rich; yet we cannot conceive his calm as not the calm of
inward desperation; cannot conceive that he has anything to bless
himself with except the roll of bank-notes that he has just produced
from his breast-pocket. One and all, the players are levelled by the
invisible presence of the goddess they are courting. Well, the visible
presence of the judge in a court of law oppresses us with a yet keener
sense of lowliness and obliteration. He crouches over us, visible
symbol of the majesty of the law, and we wilt to nothingness beneath
him. And when I say `him' I include the whole judicial bench.
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