Dear Anne,

You ask: "How do you know that your logic persuaded?  Were you just
trying to read their faces, or did they say, specifically, that you 
were right?  I so wish I could have been there.  
I answer: They did not specifically buy my argument. I infer that they 
acccepted it, because they did not challenge it with follow-up questions 
as they had challenged the arguments with which they disagreed in the 
antecedent cases.

I am acutely aware that notwithstanding their apparent agreement with me, they may yet rule against me, if only because the courts sustain their 
dignity by demanding sacrifice, not necessarily human lives as in the 
Salem Witch trials, but punishment sacrifices, pecuniary or otherwise. 
And in this perspective I may have been very foolish to disregard
your advice by boasting to them at the end about how much fun I was 
having in their court. I was supposed to be miserable; arguably they 
will now feel constrained to punish me to make me feel appropriately 
miserable, so as to sustain their  dignity and importance. 

But, Anne, there's more to the dialectic, and this may drive you up 
the wall. The fifth volume of my novel about the Four Friends demands 
an ironic and tragic end; and yesterday's experience suggests that my 
protagonist Maximilian Katenus who is on trial for the 21st century 
version of witchcraft: being different from and smarter than anyone else,
will have the opportunity at his trial to give a brilliant lecture 
on civil rights and constitutional law before being condemned to what 
is worse than death, life-long solitary confinement.

Jochen