Merry days these—happy days these—let us laugh and grow fat, for
to-morrow we die. The miser’s daughter had a hundred suitors, and well
she might; for she was young, and beautiful, and pure. And was she not
heir-apparent of millions? Good Lord! Good Lord! how they did amble, and
trot, and show their paces, and protest, and pray, and besiege—all to
no purpose! And those jurymen, too, who were baulked of their verdict,
did they not open their eyes widely when the story was told them, and
say that they knew it would be so? And the judge, did he not crack his
joke with the junior counsel, and bemoan the young man’s stars which had
so betrayed his interest, and wagged his tongue with some venom in it,
upon the losing side? And the counsel, senior and junior—did they not
assume a show of wisdom, and say that from the beginning they had no
confidence in the cause? A blind business was it with us all, when we
undertook to mete out justice to father and daughter, with a seven-fold
cloud before our eyes; and a blind business the law ever is.
Quid faciant leges, ubi sola pecunia regnat,
Aut ubi paupertus vincere nulla potent?
Ipri, qui cynica traducunt tempora cœna,
Nonnum quum nummis vendere verba solent.
Ergo judicium nihil est, nisi publica muces,
Atque equis, in caussa qui redet, emtor probat.
So sang Petronius, and so sing I.