I have blind faith in anything connected to the courts of justice. I never doubt anything anyone in the judiciary says or utters. To all people of little faith I say go hence and flee, hide and don’t show your faces. Our court is made up of savants, servants of all things fair and beautiful.

OK let’s move on now from my paean to the courts of law.

It must be my dim silly eyes—old and haggard as they are—which made me read some silliness about a count and his girlfriend. I have only love and admiration for counts of course—they are, after all, noble, and noblemen and noblewomen are all true examples of exemplary upbringing and unbridled rectitude.

A magistrate of the court was faced with a count who was accused of some wrongdoing. The count’s lawyer asked for his name not to be published and the magistrate agreed. Please do not tempt me to say said decree is worthy only of asses’ minds. Be gone devilish thought! The reason the learned lawyer presented to the court—to have the count’s face masked—was that the count’s future countess suffers from some illness or other. Discovering his name could, for some strange reason, be deemed wrong by all the aristocracy of the world as well as by us little plebs of this world so we were not told the count’s name. The count has not been shamed or named. The court and the prosecution, in their infinite shared wisdom, agreed to not name the count.

The world at large is now at ease and fully relaxed: aristocracy in Malta, in cahoots with other branches of society, still rules. Counts, bless them, rock.