394
The Green Bag
of convictions. Therefore his ofiicial superiors are indifferent to his modest advances, and
his colleagues treat him as an impracticable dreamer. He is forever waiting for the chance which almost every one of them is trying to make for himself. At last his chance seems to have arrived. A capital crime has been committed in his district. A rich old man has been murdered in his bed by some person unknown and the neighborhood and all official aspirants for glory are eager for a brilliant investigation, a sensational trial, and a result which shall show that in this district the government governs and deserves recognition. But it happens that the desired excitement
is dampened somewhat at the start by the scruples of a local judge before whom the case is first brought. One of the witnesses is an honest countryman who lived near the mur dered man_ and who saw some strangers— vagabonds-coming from the house of the murder in the early morning just before it was discovered. Naturally the judge sup poses the crime to have been committed by that party. But the search for them or any of them has been unsuccessful. The community and the profession demand at least a scapegoat. The old judge grows nervous and restless under the publicity of methods to which he is not accustomed. He even takes the trouble to mll upon the prose cuting officer to complain of the distasteful prospect of a vulgar display of advocacy when the case shall be opened against whomsoever it may be. Then he says that he does not feel well and finally refuses to go on with the use. Thus the prosecuting officer is thrown upon his own resources to find the criminal and success. The old judge's refusal comes on the day when the prosecuting officer is giving a dinner party for politic reasons to his professional brethren at the close of the term's work. In making the house ready for the company the maid of all work finds a box which has to be moved and which contains a red robe that was bought two years before by the prosecut ing officer's wife when she expected him to be promoted to an office permitting that dress. It is "la robe rouge," which gives its name to the play. While waiting for the guests to arrive the prosecuting officer, happening to see the box opened, puts on the red robe and expatiates before his wife and daughter upon the superior
impressiveness which he might have before judge and if dressed in such a costume. While he is posing and making a trial speech to an imaginary jury the guests arrive and the red robe has to be suddenly taken off and put away. The guests are a scheming judge who was I a peasant's son, and his wife who is well matched, also another very skillful judge who is besides a man of pleasure and is quite ex pert in the arts of a double life. also an old outspoken judge who is retiring from office after a long and unambitious service and says that now he finds he has nothing to hope for but has the right to judge according to his conscience in an inferior court, and a young awistant of the prosecuting officer who studied law because his family wished it and does not
relish the fashion of treating one's magistracy as a career for the display of talents instead
of the practice of the most difficult virtues. After a conversation which brings out their characters they talk about the recent murder
case and the failure to find any one against whom the crime can be proved. The schem ing judge suggests that being a peasant's son he cannot help being blunt, and takes
his host to task for not bringing more grist to the judicial mill to swell the importance
of the district in the trial records.
The host
replies that he has "given orders" for zealous service even against smugglers. who are common there. The retiring judge draws out the young assistant to confess that he dreads his career because he would prefer to devote himself really to justice and mercy. At which the old retiring judge says that the young man has mistaken his role and should have been a priest. Soon the sporting judge exclaims that the fact is that the scrupulous judge who had had charge of the murder case was not the man for the job, and claims that his own more varied experience in criminal cases would dictate a more successful search for the real criminal. He is urged by the company to speak freely, and after a little coquetting about his reluc tance to seem to set his opinion against that of a colleague he lets himself go and asserts flatly that thus far the investigation has been fundamentally mistaken because it has as sumed a vagabond was the criminal. He argues that the facts require a different ex
planation.
He recites them as follows: “In a
lonely house there is found one morning an old man of eighty-seven years of age murdered
