The communal doctor alone interceded on his behalf, imploring
the judge in the name of the sacred brotherhood of freemasons that he,
the Messiah, should be excarcerated in order that he, the physician,
might be enabled to continue the daily treatment to which the old man
had grown accustomed and for which he was being regularly remunerated.
"Think of my wife and children!" he said to the magistrate.
Signor Malipizzo on this occasion did not mean to be baulked of his
prey. He was in bad humour; Don Giustino had got on his nerves. By
means of a lightning-like discharge of symbols intelligible only to the
Elect he retorted that a physician, who depended for his livelihood
upon a legitimate practice among BONA FIDE patients, was not fit to be
a freemason.
Then the doctor urged the humanitarian aspects of the case. The old man
needed the treatment which could be given in prison just as well; the
fees would doubtless be paid sooner or later.
The magistrate proved inexorable, adamantine. What was good enough for
a native, he argued, was good enough for a vicious old alien.
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