We are obliged to respect and adopt this precedent. It is upon precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.'
Mr. Justice Crawford said:
'But, your Excellency, he was pardoned on the scaffold for that.'
'The pardon is not valid, and cannot stand, because he was pardoned for killing Szczepanik, a man whom he had not killed. A man cannot be pardoned for a crime which he has not committed; it would be an absurdity.'
'But, your Excellency, he did kill a man.'
'That is an extraneous detail; we have nothing to do with it. The court cannot take up this crime until the prisoner has expiated the other one.'
Mr. Justice Halleck said:
'If we order his execution, your Excellency, we shall bring about a miscarriage of justice, for the governor will pardon him again.'
'He will not have the power. He cannot pardon a man for a crime which he has not committed. As I observed before, it would be an absurdity.'
After a consultation, Mr. Justice Wadsworth said:
'Several of us have arrived at the conclusion, your Excellency, that it would be an error to hang the prisoner for killing Szczepanik, instead of for killing the other man, since it is proven that he did not kill Szczepanik.'
'On the contrary, it is proven that he did kill Szczepanik. By the French precedent, it is plain that we must abide by the finding of the court.'
'But Szczepanik is still alive.'
'So is Dreyfus.'
In the end it was found impossible to ignore or get around the French precedent. There could be but one result: Clayton was delivered over for the execution. It made an immense excitement; the State rose as one man and clamored for Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so, and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and, indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who invented it and inflicted it upon the other Christian lands.
[1] Pronounced (approximately) Shepannik.
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
I
I have a project to suggest. But first I will write a chapter of introduction.
I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Theatre in Vienna. I do not know of any play that much resembles it. In fact, it is such a departure from the common laws of the drama that the name 'play' doesn't seem to fit it quite snugly. However, whatever else it may be, it is in any case a great and stately metaphysical poem, and deeply fascinating. 'Deeply fascinating' is the right term: for the audience sat four hours and five minutes without thrice breaking into applause, except at the close of each act; sat rapt and silent-- fascinated. This piece is 'The Master of Palmyra.' It is twenty years old; yet I doubt if you have ever heard of it. It is by Wilbrandt, and is his masterpiece and the work which is to make his name permanent in German literature. It has never been played anywhere except in Berlin and in the great Burg Theatre in Vienna. Yet whenever it is put on the stage it packs the house, and the free list is suspended. I know people who have seem it ten times; they know the most of it by heart; they do not tire of it; and they say they shall still be quite willing to go and sit under its spell whenever they get the opportunity.
There is a dash of metempsychosis in it--and it is the strength of the piece. The play gave me the sense of the passage of a dimly connected procession of dream-pictures. The scene of it is Palmyra in Roman times. It covers a wide stretch of time--I don't know how many years--and in the course of it the chief actress is reincarnated several times: four times she is a more or less young woman, and once she is a lad.