in the middle looms OUR LORD JUSTICE Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, visible from the elbows to the head, an isosceles triangle (the acme pointing to God). Christian England, the bulwark of Western Civilization, invented by Dickens in his finest hour: graying in the dust of files to abstract, patriarchal justice; learnedly sucking a pencil, discreet harrumphs purging the throat, mind, and conscience; and in the sea-blue eyes under the periwig (here set aside) the eternal boyishness of Britain . . .

and to his right and left, the apostles. (Not a zodiac describing twelve but one more than half, namely seven, the number of perfection and the completed action; the judges are arranged not dramatically in four trios, as seasonal constellations, but in the four-times-two-makes-eight of eternity.) At the left of OUR LORD’s British colleague, two Frenchmen (their artistic tailor is Daumier) in bat cloaks, vain neck-bands, puffy lawyer-caps: the black brethren of the white cook and the red Communard, gazing with astute Cartesian eyes from behind their thriftily iron-framed glasses, and paper-flower bouquets of éloquence proliferating from their narrow lips. . .

and to the right, two Americans, Midwestern senator busts: square-shouldered, square-headed, square-faced, square-minded, craftiness in philistine droning, bull-like aggression in the pettifoggery of Civil Law, world potentates in cast-iron self-righteousness . . .

finally, farther to the right, two Russians in bombastic generals’ uniforms belonging to the people (albeit without the full pomp of medals): over blood-red epaulets the size of meat platters, their stubble heads are as immovable as rocks on which the frail fuss and claptrap of the Capitalist Imperialists shatter . . .

one of them sheds an occasional Mongolian grin over a piece of paper, on which he doodles motionlessly. He is drawing caricatures of the people called to the witness stand, and whenever he pulls off an especially good one, he feels a childlike joy . . .