Nighttime darkness and emptiness had restored to the courtyard—and to the entire Palace of Justice—a strong resemblance to a converted colonial convent, which it is. During the day, that resemblance is much diminished by the hustle and bustle of litigants and lawyers, heirs and executors, prisoners and police, the impromptu conferences in the corridors, the men gesturing threateningly on the stairs, the continual buzz of a wasp nest, and occasional shouts and laughter that rise above the din to echo in the domed ceilings of the ancient building. During the day, the convent blurs and disappears behind a total disguise of paint, plaster, and disrespectful renovations. Who is likely to think, when entering the chambers of the Supreme Court, or any of the inferior tribunals, or the Registry of Deeds—who is likely to think of the austere cloisters and oratories, the silent passageways, the bare cells where nuns once slept? Those who go there now do not recognize or think about it because, after all, they have other business to attend to. They have to litigate, to steal legally, using laws as their tool, to fashion the intricate deceptions of which lawyerly reputations are made. Too bad for whoever believes in true Justice, because such candor has no place here. In the palace dedicated to her, the goddess holding scales and a sword rarely shows her face, and when she does, seems to shrug her shoulders. The assault on justice is incessant; the continual scuffle, deafening; the doctors of laws, notaries, and scribes are numberless; the claimants, both honest and dishonest, never ending. Greed and venality hangs so thick in the air that one can almost reach out and touch it. Christians are as good at this as Jews. And as if these hawks and hyenas spitting articles of law codes were not a sufficient plague in themselves, the authorities, in their wisdom, have chosen the right courtyard of the ancient building for the location of jury trials, whose Solomonic deliberations crown the magnum opus of human justice!

Nonetheless, in the quiet of the night, the building recovers the feel of a convent. The files slumber in the filing cabinets; the long desks and tables, as black as coffins, sink into the shadows that fill each room and become invisible; partition curtains billow softly like misshapen, satanic owls; the ceiling rustles infinitesimally as worms, spiders, and bats move about unseen. The Supreme Court, the inferior tribunals, and Registry of Deeds vanish, and the old oratories light up, the bare cells are repopulated, and through the austere cloisters file ghosts of the convent's inhabitants of centuries past. The watchman swears—and one should always heed what such persons say—that voices praying and singing psalms can often be heard in the building at night, that many have glimpsed figures clad in the old habits, carrying tall yellowish candles with frail yellowish hands, gliding along noiselessly on bare feet. He says that a soft, dull sound of bones accompanies the spectral procession on its way to the main sanctuary of the convent, which is still a church and where the specters are doubtless awaited because—and again, the watchman guarantees this and cites testimony—the old organ can be heard playing on those nights, though the sound is muffled as if it were coming from underground. And before dawn, the procession returns and dissolves through closed doors, going who knows where, so that, when the sunlight spills into the building the next morning and the janitors arrive, they find everything in its place, and it appears that nothing—not a table or chair, not a sheet of paper or a cigarette butt, not even a spider web—has budged during the night.