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Just consider. There are something like twenty thousand citizens in all. Every single one of them frequents the market-place on some business (you may be sure), either public or private. Not so the defendant. He cannot point to any decent or honorable business in which he has spent his life; he does not use his talents in the service of the State; he is not engaged in a profession or in agriculture or in any other business; he takes no part in any charitable or social organization:
52
but he makes his way through the market-place like a snake or a scorpion with sting erect, darting hither and thither, on the look-out for someone on whom he can call down disaster or calumny or mischief of some sort, or whom he can terrify till he extorts money from him. He never calls at the barber’s or the perfumer’s or any other shop in the city. He is implacable, restless, unsociable; he has no charity, no friendliness, none of the feelings of a decent human being; he is attended by those companions whom painters couple with the damned souls in hell—by Malediction, Evil-speaking, Envy, Faction, Dissension.
