The bailiff was peculiarly an executive officer; one of that
class who believe that the enactment of a law is a point of far less
interest than its due fulfilment. Indeed, so far did he push his favorite
principle, that he did not hesitate sometimes to suppose shades of meaning
in the different ordinances of the great council that existed only in his
own brain, but which were, to do him justice, sufficiently convenient to
himself in carrying out the constructions which he saw fit to put on his
own duties. The appearance of an affair of justice was unfortunate for the
progress of the ceremonies, Peterchen having some such relish for the
punishment of rogues, and more especially for such as seemed to be an
eternal reproach to the action of the Bernese system by their incorrigible
misery and poverty, as an old coachman is proverbially said to retain for
the crack of the whip. All his judicial sympathies were not fully
awakened, on the present occasion, however: the criminals, though far from
belonging to the more lucky of their fellow-creatures, not being quite
miserable enough in appearance to awaken all those powers of magisterial
reproach and severity that lay dormant in the bailiff's moral temperament,
ready, at any time, to vindicate the right of the strong against the
innovations of the feeble and unhappy.
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