[Illustration: SCENE IN A MAIRIE DURING THE PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF MILITARY CONSCRIPTS.
One of the oldest and most characteristic features of the French administration of justice, the _juge d'instruction_, has but recently disappeared. The very extensive powers of this magistrate, but vaguely defined by law and custom, lent themselves readily to the abuses which undoubtedly constituted a grave defect in the criminal jurisprudence of the nation. To him were confided all the details of the preliminary investigation of a crime and the detection of the criminal, the seeking for clues, the right of search, of arrest of any suspected characters, of summoning witnesses and experts, of interrogating the accused, and--but too generally--of wresting a confession from him by any means that might present themselves. One of the methods employed was the ostentatious consultation before him of a blank memorandum which, the accused was given to understand, contained the complete avowal of a confederate. In the famous _affaire Wilson_ of a few years ago, concerning the alleged sale of decorations of the Legion of Honor, M. Vigneau, the official charged with this investigation, telephoned to one of these purchasers of red ribbons in the assumed character of M. Wilson. These irregular practices, however, it is asserted, were mostly practised by younger and more inexperienced Juges d'Instruction, and were greatly disapproved by the graver and older magistrates. The accused--who not infrequently would declare subsequently that the statements which he was reported to have made by the _curieux_, in thieves' slang, were but a distorted version of his words--was considered to have an additional security in the presence of the magistrate's _greffier_, or clerk, who took down his testimony, and in the fact that he himself need not sign this statement if he considered it inexact.
It was recognized that the qualities, physical, moral, and mental, possessed by a truly able and upright Juge d'Instruction were necessarily exceptional. He should have a very extensive judicial knowledge and experience, he should be gifted with powers of precision, of observation, of decision, of activity, of patience, and of evenness of temper. He should be affected by nothing, surprised by nothing. His bodily health should be sound, his brain cool, and his digestion excellent. He was liable to be summoned from his bed at any hour of the night to investigate a new crime; and when he entered his cabinet tranquilly at one o'clock in the afternoon, it was possible that a minute afterward he would be leaving it hastily on the trail of a fresh offence against justice. In Paris, these magistrates, twenty-eight in number,--with the exception of two who sat in the Petit Parquet,--occupied the three upper stories of the Palais; in the antechamber of each, under the eye of an attendant, or _garçon de bureau_, might be found waiting, more or less impatiently, a number of witnesses and persons interested, from all classes of society. In the inner room, before the magistrate seated at his desk, and flanked by his greffier, the prisoner or the suspected criminal, guarded by two soldiers of the Garde Municipale, would be undergoing his examination,--badgered, bullied, cross-examined, threatened, matching his dull and unaccustomed wits against the keener, trained, and experienced ones of the judge, outmatched at every point, and but too frequently failing to demonstrate his innocence which it should have been as much the care of his examiner as his own to demonstrate.