By the word avocat is designated those lawyers who, after having obtained the title of Licencié en Droit, have taken the professional oath before a Cour d'Appel. But, in order to be able to plead, they are required, in addition, to be admitted to the bar of the tribunal or the court. The Avocats-Consultants are those who, not having been admitted to the bar, cannot plead in the courts, but give legal consultations in their offices. The Avoués, attorneys, are appointed by the court or tribunal to represent the litigants before it. They cannot be avocats, and are obliged to be residents of Paris.
Among the multitude of attendants and habitués of the judicial tribunals are the necessary witnesses and experts, of all kinds in degree,—the témoin à charge, important witness, listened to with attention; the témoin à décharge, uncertain and ill at ease; the expert-comptable, very conscientious; the expert en écriture, in handwriting, very positive and authoritative and unreliable, after the manner of his kind; the experts in medicine, in mental ailments, in physics, etc. The various degrees of willingness and unwillingness on the part of those who receive these official assignations à témoin are much as in other climes.
After the summer vacation, the opening of the courts is preceded by an annual divine service, the messe rouge [the red mass], held in the Sainte-Chapelle and attended by all the magistrates in their robes of office, red, black, and ermine. In 1898, this ceremony took place on October 17th, and was presided over by Cardinal Richard, Archbishop of Paris. The mass was celebrated by Canon Pousset, of the cathedral of Notre-Dame. After the service, the magistrates return to their courts in hieratic procession, following each other strictly in the order of their rank, the walls of the passage-ways being hung, for the occasion, with Gobelins tapestry.
A similar ceremony has been introduced in London. For the second time, in this same month of October, 1898, the legal year was inaugurated by a religious service celebrated with great pomp at Westminster. The Lord Chancellor, the judges, the Queen's Counsel, and a great number of representatives of the bar were present at this messe rouge English and Anglican. The Catholic judges and lawyers have long been in the habit of attending a similar service on this occasion in one of their own churches.
By an excellent arrangement, the Palais de Justice is enabled to lodge its criminals in one of its dependencies, the prison of the Conciergerie, whence the guards conduct them directly, by private staircases, to the court-room where they are to be tried,—thus avoiding any unseemly exposure of these unfortunates to the populace. An ingenious supposition as to the origin of the name of this famous prison, a barracks under the old kings of France, is furnished by M. Pottet,—that it was inhabited by a certain captain who provided himself with the title of Comte des Cierges [Count of Candles], concierge, janitor, or house-porter. Those who are confined in the Conciergerie are the criminals who are to appear before the Cour d'Assises; those convicted by the police correctionnelle of the departments, waiting the result of their appeal to a higher court, and those condemned to death during the three days which the law allows them for their appearance en cassation.
In the Dépôt are deposited temporarily all the individuals arrested in the department of the Seine, for any crime whatever, and held for justice. This general depository receives on an average a hundred and fifty prisoners a day. Any one arrested by a police agent and conducted to the poste, if not delivered by some friend before the arrival of the panier à salade, is put into this cheerful vehicle, much like a closed-up omnibus, and carted off to the Dépôt. There, he is interrogated, searched, measured by the service anthropométrique of M. Bertillon, and held for three days. At the end of this period, he is transferred to some other prison,—to Mazas, before it was demolished, or to the Santé. The desperate criminals have the privilege of remaining in the Dépôt under the eye of the agents de la sûreté.
Within the walls of the Palais de Justice is included a third place of detention, the Souricière, in which are confined the accused brought from the various prisons of the city,—la Santé, Sainte-Pélagie, la Petite and la Grande-Roquette, Saint-Lazare,—to appear either for their trial or for their examination before the Juge d'Instruction. The Souricière [mouse-trap] is a gloomy and ill-smelling basement, almost without light and air, and frequently crowded to suffocation, situated under the chambers of the police correctionnelle. The prisoners are very often confined here from eleven o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock in the evening, without being given either food or drink. This abuse is of long standing, notwithstanding the many protestations that have been raised against it.