But the Count set himself to maintain the point. “A man,” he argued, “can hardly gauge his own position. I go about much, my dear Geoffrey, and hear what is said of your success. Why, only this afternoon at the Travellers, Josselyn, who you will allow knows something of his profession and yours, was saying that you had now quite taken the place, vacant since his death, of one of the most successful advocates of our generation, Paul Gastineau.”
At the name, Herriard and Alexia’s eyes met with such significance that Prosper could not but notice it.
“Why, what is it? What have I said?” he demanded, glancing from one to the other.
“Nothing,” his sister answered quickly. “It is curious that we happened to mention Mr. Gastineau’s name a little while ago.”
“You are supposed to be like him in Court, Herriard,” Prosper went on. “But with more scrupulousness and less venom.” He laughed. “That’s what the critics say. I don’t know how far it is a compliment. I never heard Gastineau in Court; but I dare say you know better than I, his reputation was not quite such as a very honourable man would envy. He went in to win at any price, didn’t he? and not always to fight fair, either in law or politics, so they say.”
“I have heard that,” Herriard said, thinking of what Alexia had told him.
“But he was successful,” Count Prosper continued in the lazy discussion of a fact which a cigar induces; “the world is dazzled by success, and in its eagerness to applaud does not stop to ask how the success has been won.”
“Only a few men do that,” Alexia observed, “and their criticism goes for little.”
“Yes,” Herriard agreed, “in the judgment of men’s characters, of successful men, at any rate, it is the few who are right, the mob who are wrong. But the mob counts.”
“Talking of that man Gastineau,” Count Prosper said casually, “have you heard the weird story that he has been seen about town?”