Still it was their good pleasure to pursue me with warrants and summonses, and there was nothing for it but to appear when and wherever they wanted me.
"Is this confounded affair the cause of my passport being detained?" whispered I to Van.
"Precisely," said he; "and if not very dexterously handled, the expense may be enormous."
I almost lost all self-possession at these words. I had been a mark for legal pillage and robbery from the first moment of my arrival, and it seemed as if they would not suffer me to leave the country while I had a Napoleon remaining. Stung nearly to madness, I resolved to make one desperate effort at rescue, and, like some of those woebegone creatures in our own country who insist on personal appeals to a Chief Justice, I called, "Monsieur le Président—" There, however, my French left me, and, after a terrible struggle to get on, I had to continue my address in the vernacular.
"Who is this man?" asked he, sternly.
"Dodd père, Monsieur le Président," interposed my lawyer, who seemed most eager to save me from the consequences of my rashness.
"Ah! he is Dodd père," said the president, solemnly; and now he and his two colleagues adjusted their spectacles, and gazed at me long and attentively; in fact, with such earnestness did they stare that I began to feel my character of Dodd père was rather an imposing kind of performance. "Enfin," said the president, with a faint sigh, as though the reasoning process had been rather a fatiguing one,—"enfin! Dodd père is the father of Dodd fils, the respondent."
Vanhoegen bowed submissive assent, and muttered, as I thought, some little flattery about the judicial acuteness and perspicuity.
"Let him be sworn," said the president; and accordingly I held up my hand, while the clerk recited something with a humdrum rapidity that I guessed must mean an oath.
"You are called Dodd père?" said the Attorney-General, addressing me.