OUR HUMBLE HELPERS 



"Wait: punishment will come. The dog's 

 strange conduct, together with other suspicious cir- 

 cumstances, had made an impression on the king. 

 Some days later Charles V had Macaire appear be- 

 fore him and pressed him by his questions to confess 

 the truth. What foundation was there for the sus- 

 picions current in regard to him? How explain, 

 if he were not guilty, the dog's repeated attacks and 

 furious barking at sight of him? Seized with the 

 fear of a shameful punishment, Macaire obstinately 

 denied the crime. 



" Ait this epoch, characterized by manners and cus- 

 toms little above barbarism, when the accuser 

 affirmed and the accused denied, with no sufficient 

 proof on either side, it was customary to decide the 

 question by a mortal combat between the two. The 

 one that succumbed was held to be in the wrong.' 7 



"But to be the weaker proves nothing against 

 right, " objected Jules. "One might be a thousand 

 times right and yet be beaten by one's adversary." 



' t That is undeniably true, and I hope you will from 

 day to day become more firmly convinced of this 

 noble truth. In our lamentable age you will learn 

 this later, my friend in our lamentable age it is a 

 current maxim, a maxim of savagery, that might 

 makes right! In the days of Charles V, rude as 

 that period was, no one would have dared to say 

 such a horrible thing; but nevertheless, under the 

 influence of superstition, men really believed that 

 the vanquished was in the wrong, because, they 

 maintained, right can never succumb, upheld as it 



