Leonard.—I rather think so—a mule like a camel, and such a ferocious character, that he came within an ace of taking my life!
Judge.—You will please to make good this point of the injuries sustained.
Leonard.—The thing is easy. This M. Galoupeau insisted that I should take a look at his beast, and brought him out of the stable. The animal made off like a mad thing, and came near killing all the poultry. Then M. Galoupeau, who professes to know his habits, followed him up to the bottom of the yard, spoke gently to him, and after getting a hand upon his shoulder, called me up. As for myself, I went up confidently. I came near the beast, and just as I was about to reach out my hand for a gentle caress, the brute kicked me in the stomach—such a kick!—Mon Dieu! but here, your Honor, is the certificate—"twelve days a-bed; one hundred and fifty leeches." All that for caressing the brute!
Galoupeau.—If you were instructed, M. Léonard, in the nature of these beasts, you would understand that they never submit to any flattery from behind; and you know very well that you approached him by the tail.
Here two stable-boys were called to the stand, who testified that Signor Léonard Vidaillon, late cooper, did approach their master's jackass by the tail; and furthermore, that the mule (or jackass) was ordinarily of a quiet and peaceable disposition. This being shown to the satisfaction of the Court, and since it appeared that an inexperience, arising out of ignorance of the nature of the beast, had occasioned the injury to Signor Vidaillon, the case was decided for the plaintiff. Poor Léonard was mulcted in the cost of the mule, the costs of the suit, the cost of a hundred and fifty leeches, and the cost of broader shafts to his family wagon.
We have entertained our reader with this report—first, to show how parties to a French suit plead their own cause; and next, to show how the French reporters render the cause into writing. The story is headed in the French journal, like a farce—"A little mule will grow."
As for the town, in these hot days of summer, it looks slumberous. The hundreds who peopled the up-town walks with silks and plumes, are gone to the beach of Newport, or the shady verandas of the "United States." Even now, we will venture the guess, there are scores of readers running over this page under the shadow of the Saratoga colonnades, or in view of the broad valley of the Mohawk, who parted from us last month in some cushioned fauteuil of the New York Avenues.
The down-town men wear an air of ennui, and slip uneasily through the brick and mortar labyrinths of Maiden-lane and of John-street. Brokers, even, long for their Sunday's recess—when they can steal one breath of health and wideness at New Rochelle, or Rockaway. Southerners, with nurses and children, begin to show themselves in the neighborhood of the Union and Clarendon, and saunter through our sunshine as if our sunshine were a bath of spring.
Fruits meantime are ripening in all our stalls; and it takes the edge from the sultriness of the season to wander at sunrise, through the golden and purple show of our Washington market. Most of all, to such as are tied, by lawyer's tape or editorial pen, to the desks of the city, does it bring a burst of country glow to taste the firstlings of the country's growth, and to doat upon the garden glories of the year—as upon so many testimonial clusters, brought back from a land of Canaan.