Suspect: Ah---a judge! Now there you've touched a weak spot of mine, Inspector. That is indeed a noble profession: To judge! To sentence! To persecute! You're a police inspector, you must know the feeling. But being a judge is the best of all occupations. First of all you hardly ever have to retire. In fact, at the precise moment when an ordinary man, any working person, reaches fifty-five or sixty years old and already has to be dumped because he's beginning to get a little slow, a little late in his reflexes, the judge is just starting the high point of his career. A worker on the assembly line or cutting machine is washed up after the age of fifty; he causes slow-ups, accidents--he has to be gotten rid of! A fifty-five year old miner has silicosis: out, canned, fired, quickly before he can begin to draw his retirement pension. The same thing goes for bank tellers: at a certain age they begin to mess up the accounts, forget the names of companies and clients, discount rates, corporate executives---go home . . . scram . . . you're too old and feeble-minded!
For judges, on the other hand, it's exactly the opposite: the older and more feeble-minded they get, the higher ranks they're promoted to. They're given important, absolute powers! You see a bunch of little old men, made out of cardboard and utterly incapable of moving their limbs; wearing satin cordons, ermine capes, shiny black top hats with golden stripes that make them look like bit players from the comic opera of Venice; doddering along with faces resembling small, dried Piedmontese mushrooms . . . pairs of spectacles hanging from their necks by little gold chains, otherwise they'd lose them; they can never remember where they put them down. Well, these characters have the power to save or destroy however and whenever they will: they toss out certain life sentences just the way someone might say, "hey, maybe it will rain tomorrow!" Fifty years for you . . . thirty for you . . . "You over there---twenty years!" "But I'm the prosecutor, your honor." "Oh, in that case, ten years." "You, five---I like your face." "Now, gentlemen, when I say three, make a deal. One. Two."
Ah yes, yes indeed: judging is the occupation, the role I would give anything to play at least once in my life. The Supreme Court, the Superior Court judge---"your excellency; please be seated; silence, the court is coming in...oh, look I found a bone: is it yours? No, that's impossible; I have none left!"
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