“It will; I am listening.”
Mashko looked for a time in silence at Pan Stanislav, as if to prepare him by that silence for some important announcement; at last he said, with a wonderful calmness, weighing out every expression,—
“I wished to tell thee that I am lost beyond redemption.”
“Hast lost the will case?”
“No; the case will come up only two weeks from now but I know that I shall lose it.”
“Whence hast thou that certainty?”
“Dost remember what I told thee once, that cases against wills are won almost always because the attack is more energetic than the defence; because usually the overthrow of the will concerns some one personally, while maintaining it does not? Everything in the world may be attacked; for though a thing be in accordance with the spirit of the law, almost always, in a greater degree or less, it fails to satisfy the letter, and the courts must hold to the letter.”
“True. Thou hast said all that.”
“Well, so it is, too, in this case which I took up. It was not so adventurous as may seem. The whole question was to break the will; and I should, perhaps, succeed in proving certain disagreements in it with the letter of the law, were it not that there is a man striving with equal energy to prove that there are none such. I will not talk long about this; it is enough for thee to know that I have to contend not merely with an opponent who is a lawyer and a finished trickster, but a personal enemy, for whom it is a question, not only to win the case, but to ruin me. Once I slighted him, and now he is taking revenge.”
“In general, I do not understand why you have to do with any one except the State Attorney.”