“Give me a judgment for defamation of character. Give me a thousand dollars or so for that, m’sieu’, and you’ll do a good turn to a deserving fellow-citizen and admirer—one little thousand, that’s all, m’sieu’. Then I’ll dance at your wedding and weep at your tomb—so there!”
How easy he made the way for the little Clerk of the Court! “Defamation of character”—could there possibly be a better opening for what he had promised Judge Carcasson he would say!
“Ah, Monsieur Masson,” very officially and decorously replied M. Fille, “but is it defamation of character? If the thing is true, then what is the judgment? It goes against you—so there!” There was irony in the last words.
“If what thing is true?” sharply asked the mastercarpenter, catching at the fringe of the idea in M. Fille’s mind. “What thing?”
“Ah, but it is true, for I saw it! Yes, alas! I saw it with my own eyes. By accident of course; but there it was—absolute, uncompromising, deadly and complete.”
It was a happy moment for the little Clerk of the Court when he could, in such an impromptu way, coin a phrase, or a set of adjectives, which would bear inspection of purists of the language. He loved to talk, though he did not talk a great deal, but he made innumerable conversations in his mind, and that gave him facility when he did speak. He had made conversations with George Masson in his mind since yesterday, when he gave his promise to Judge Carcasson; but none of them was like the real conversation now taking place. It was all the impression of the moment, while the phrases in his mind had been wonderfully logical things which, from an intellectual standpoint, would have delighted the man whose cause he was now engaged in defending.
“You saw what, M’sieu’ la Fillette? Out with it, and don’t use such big adjectives. I’m only a carpenter. ‘Absolute, uncompromising, deadly, complete’—that’s a mouthful of grammar, my lords! Come, my sprig of jurisprudence, tell us what you saw.” There was an apparent nervousness in Masson’s manner now. Indeed he showed more agitation than when, a few hours before, Jean Jacques had stood with his hand on the lever of the gates of the flume, and the life of the master-carpenter at his feet, to be kicked into eternity.
“Four days ago at five o’clock in the afternoon”—in a voice formal and exact, the little Clerk of the Court seemed to be reading from a paper, since he kept his eyes fixed on the blotter before him, as he did in Court—“I was coming down the hill behind the Manor Cartier, when my attention—by accident—was drawn to a scene below me in the Manor. I stopped short, of course, and—”
“Diable! You stopped short ‘of course’ before what you saw! Spit it out—what did you see?” George Masson had had a trying day, and there was danger of losing control of himself. There was a whiteness growing round the eyes, and eating up the warmth of the cheek; his admirably smooth brow was contracted into heavy wrinkles, and a foot shifted uneasily on the floor with a scraping sole. This drew the attention of M. Fille, who raised his head reprovingly—he could not get rid of the feeling that he was in court, and that a case was being tried; and the severity of a Judge is naught compared with the severity of a Clerk of the Court, particularly if he is small and unmarried, and has no one to beat him into manageable humanity.
M. Fille’s voice was almost querulous.