Oh, yes, he was pretty well in possession of them. It was Herr Settembrini, the professed aesthete, who was probably not altogether familiar with the history of the development of medieval jurisprudence. There had been, in fact, a process of continuous rationalization, in the course of which reason had taken the place of God, who had been shoved out of the department of justice. In other words, trial by battle had fallen into disuse, because it had been observed that the stronger man conquered even when he was in the wrong. It had been people of Herr Settembrini’s kidney, the doubters and critics, who had made the observation, and brought about the Inquisition, which superseded the old naive procedure. Justice no longer relied on the intervention of God in favour of the truth, but aimed to get it out of the accused by confession. No sentence without confession⁠—you could hear that still among the people, for the instinct lodged deep with them; the chain of evidence might be as strong as it liked, but if there had been no confession, there would remain a lurking feeling that the sentence was illegitimate. But how get at the confession? How procure the truth, out of the mass of circumstance and suspicion? How look into the heart, the brain, of a man who denied and concealed?