People do not doubt without reasons in the same way that people believe without reasons.

The thing was not doubted because it was repeated everywhere and, with the public, to repeat is to prove.

It was not doubted because people wished to believe Pyrot guilty and one believes what one wishes to believe.
Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of doubt is rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these are not developed without cultivation.

Doubt is singular, exquisite, philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity, injurious to persons and to property, contrary to the good order of governments, and to the prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity, destructive of the gods, held in horror by heaven and earth.

The mass of the Penguins were ignorant of doubt: it believed in Pyrot's guilt and this conviction immediately became one of its chief national beliefs and an essential truth in its patriotic creed.
Pyrot was tried secretly and condemned.
General Panther immediately went to the Minister of War to tell him the result.
"Luckily," said he, "the judges were certain, for they had no proofs." "Proofs," muttered Greatauk, "Proofs, what do they prove?
There is only one certain, irrefragable proof--the confession of the guilty person.
Has Pyrot confessed ?" "No, General." "He will confess, he ought to.