THE CLOCK-LOCK
The pleasant scene was Neuchâtel; the pleasant month was April; the pleasant place was a notary’s office; the pleasant person in it was the notary: a rosy, hearty, handsome old man, chief notary of Neuchâtel, known far and wide in the canton as Maître Voigt. Professionally and personally, the notary was a popular citizen. His innumerable kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years made him one of the recognised public characters of the pleasant Swiss town. His long brown frock-coat and his black skull-cap, were among the institutions of the place: and he carried a snuff-box which, in point of size, was popularly believed to be without a parallel in Europe.
There was another person in the notary’s office, not so pleasant as the notary. This was Obenreizer.
An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that would never have answered in England. It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the clerk. Maître Voigt’s room was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled walls, like a toy-chamber. According to the seasons of the year, roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, peeped in at the windows. Maître Voigt’s bees hummed through the office all the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it frequently in their day’s work, as if honey were to be made from Maître Voigt’s sweet disposition. A large musical box on the chimney-piece often trilled away at the Overture to Fra Diavolo, or a Selection from William Tell, with a chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by force on the entrance of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again the moment his back was turned.
“Courage, courage, my good fellow!” said Maître Voigt, patting Obenreizer on the knee, in a fatherly and comforting way. “You will begin a new life to-morrow morning in my office here.”
Obenreizer—dressed in mourning, and subdued in manner—lifted his hand, with a white handkerchief in it, to the region of his heart. “The gratitude is here,” he said. “But the words to express it are not here.”
“Ta-ta-ta! Don’t talk to me about gratitude!” said Maître Voigt. “I hate to see a man oppressed. I see you oppressed, and I hold out my hand to you by instinct. Besides, I am not too old yet, to remember my young days. Your father sent me my first client. (It was on a question of half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any grapes.) Do I owe nothing to your father’s son? I owe him a debt of friendly obligation, and I pay it to you. That’s rather neatly expressed, I think,” added Maître Voigt, in high good humour with himself. “Permit me to reward my own merit with a pinch of snuff!”
Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he were not even worthy to see the notary take snuff.
“Do me one last favour, sir,” he said, when he raised his eyes. “Do not act on impulse. Thus far, you have only a general knowledge of my position. Hear the case for and against me, in its details, before you take me into your office. Let my claim on your benevolence be recognised by your sound reason as well as by your excellent heart. In that case, I may hold up my head against the bitterest of my enemies, and build myself a new reputation on the ruins of the character I have lost.”
“As you will,” said Maître Voigt. “You speak well, my son. You will be a fine lawyer one of these days.”