The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 34

10.24.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

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Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

34. [Plate 23]

A Sad Story Continued

It had to be one of the dullest trials in the history of jurisprudence.

It should have been otherwise. The woman was beautiful, and her crime was

juicy. It involved sex. There was no telling what lascivious details

might have come out under vigorous cross-examination. But right at the

start, the whole affair went sour.

The judge read the charges, pronounced the sentence, and asked the woman

how she plead. In a voice that barely lifted into the audible, she

mumbled, "Guilty."

Which, of course, she was. The law was clear and her goose was cooked.

But it went against all reason that she should submit to the machinery of

justice as simply as that. Even a drowning man struggles as he goes down.

The burglar with three bullets in him, still struggles to crawl away from

the advancing police. The caught fish flops wildly on the shore.

Meek as a saint, she refused to defend herself.

The prosecutor asked for a recess, and went into a huddle with the judge

and her public defender. After a series of ritual humiliations designed

to enliven the proceedings were rejected by the defense, a compromise was

reached and the woman was ordered to wear short cape and a tall and

comical dunce's hat.

This she submitted to with so sad and resigned a grace as to convince all

involved that further measures would be pointless. The day was a complete

wash. In her own sullen and voiceless way, this uncooperative spoilsport

seemed determined to rob the trial of all drama whatsoever and render it

as tedious as possible for everyone.

Changing out of his robes afterwards, the judge could not help feeling

cheated. For all the pleasure he'd gotten out of the proceedings, he

might as well have pardoned the dumb ox! Don't think he hadn't been

tempted, either.

Only his sense of obligation to his audience, his fellow members of the

legal profession, and to the young woman herself, had given him the

resolution to actually impose the death penalty upon her.

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This is the 34th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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