“We are all of a feather,” continued the proctor.
“This is curious,” observed the marshal.
“But you said you were attending to my suit,” protested the lady.
“And so I was. Yours is the first example I cite among the cases which will be suspended by our action—or, rather, inaction—he he! Here is the very paragraph concerning your ladyship.”
Snatching from his clerk the sheet of paper on which he was writing, he read with emphasis:
“—— ‘Their estate lost, fortune compromised, and their duties trodden under foot. His Majesty may imagine what such will suffer. For instance, the dependent must hold inert in his hands an important affair on which depends the fortune of one of the first families of the kingdom: by his care, industry and I make so bold as to say his talent, he was bringing this matter at length—great length—to a brilliant close, and the rights of the most high and powerful lady Angelique Charlotte Veronique de Bearn, were just going to be acknowledged and proclaimed when the breath of Discord—’ I stopped at the breath, my lady; the figure of speech was so fine—— ” said the proctor.
“Master Flageot,” said the old litigant, “forty years ago I selected your father to be my lawyer, a worthy gentleman: I continued you in the matter; in which you have made some ten or twelve thousand a-year and might be making more—”
“Write that down,” interrupted the legal gentleman: “it is a proof, an item of testimony—it shall be inserted in the appendix of supporting documents.”
“Stay,” went on the countess: “I withdraw my papers; henceforth you lose my trust.”
This disgrace struck the lawyer like a thunderbolt: recovering from the stupefaction, he raised his eyes like a martyr ready for the golden chariot to mount to heaven, and said: