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The Commission in Lunacy-Part2_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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graceless and angular. His thick knees, huge feet, and broad hands

formed a contrast with a priest-like face having a vague resemblance



to a calf's head, meek to unmeaningness, and but little brightened by

divergent bloodless eyes, divided by a straight flat nose, surmounted



by a flat forehead, flanked by enormous ears, flabby and graceless.

His thin, weak hair showed the baldness through various irregular



partings.

One feature only commended this face to the physiognomist. This man



had a mouth to whose lips divine kindness lent its sweetness. They

were wholesome, full, red lips, finely wrinkled, sinuous, mobile, by



which nature had given expression to noble feelings; lips which spoke

to the heart and proclaimed the man's intelligence and lucidity, a



gift of second-sight, and a heavenlytemper; and you would have judged

him wrongly from looking merely at his sloping forehead, his fireless



eyes, and his shambling gait. His life answered to his countenance; it

was full of secret labor, and hid the virtue of a saint. His superior



knowledge of law proved so strong a recommendation at a time when

Napoleon was reorganizing it in 1808 and 1811, that, by the advice of



Cambaceres, he was one of the first men named to sit on the Imperial

High Court of Justice at Paris. Popinot was no schemer. Whenever any



demand was made, any request preferred for an appointment, the

Minister would overlook Popinot, who never set foot in the house of



the High Chancellor or the Chief Justice. From the High Court he was

sent down to the Common Court, and pushed to the lowest rung of the



ladder by active struggling men. There he was appointed supernumerary

judge. There was a general outcry among the lawyers: "Popinot a



supernumerary!" Such injustice struck the legal world with dismay--the

attorneys, the registrars, everybody but Popinot himself, who made no



complaint. The first clamor over, everybody was satisfied that all was

for the best in the best of all possible worlds, which must certainly



be the legal world. Popinot remained supernumerary judge till the day

when the most famous Great Seal under the Restoration avenged the



oversights heaped on this modest and uncomplaining man by the Chief

Justices of the Empire. After being a supernumerary for twelve years,



M. Popinot would no doubt die a puisne judge of the Court of the

Seine.



To account for the obscure fortunes of one of the superior men of the

legal profession, it is necessary to enter here into some details



which will serve to reveal his life and character, and which will, at

the same time, display some of the wheels of the great machine known



as Justice. M. Popinot was classed by the three Presidents who

successively controlled the Court of the Seine under the category of



possible judges, the stuff of which judges are made. Thus classified,

he did not achieve the reputation for capacity which his previous



labors had deserved. Just as a painter is invariably included in a

category as a landscapepainter, a portraitpainter, a painter of



history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public consisting of

artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who, out of envy, or critical



omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his intellect, assuming, one and

all, that there are ganglions in every brain--a narrow judgment which



the world applies to writers, to statesmen, to everybody who begins

with some specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's



fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular kind of

work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who pasture on the legal



common, distinguish two elements in every case--law and equity. Equity

is the outcome of facts, law is the application of principles to



facts. A man may be right in equity but wrong in law, without any

blame to the judge. Between his conscience and the facts there is a



whole gulf of determining reasons unknown to the judge, but which




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