Colonel Chabert | Page 7

go to the
upper boxes of the Francais and see Talma in 'Nero.' Simonnin may go

to the pit."
And thereupon the head clerk sat down at his table, and the others
followed his example.
"/Given in June eighteen hundred and fourteen/ (in words)," said
Godeschal. "Ready?"
"Yes," replied the two copying-clerks and the engrosser, whose pens
forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise
in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned by schoolboys in
paper cages.
"/And we hope that my lords on the Bench/," the extemporizing clerk
went on. "Stop! I must read my sentence through again. I do not
understand it myself."
"Forty-six (that must often happen) and three forty-nines," said
Boucard.
"/We hope/," Godeschal began again, after reading all through the
document, "/that my lords on the Bench will not be less magnanimous
than the august author of the decree, and that they will do justice
against the miserable claims of the acting committee of the chief Board
of the Legion of Honor by interpreting the law in the wide sense we
have here set forth/----"
"Monsieur Godeschal, wouldn't you like a glass of water?" said the
little messenger.
"That imp of a boy!" said Boucard. "Here, get on your double-soled
shanks-mare, take this packet, and spin off to the Invalides."
"/Here set forth/," Godeschal went on. "Add /in the interest of Madame
la Vicomtesse/ (at full length) /de Grandlieu/."
"What!" cried the chief, "are you thinking of drawing up an appeal in
the case of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu against the Legion of Honor--a
case for the office to stand or fall by? You are something like an ass!
Have the goodness to put aside your copies and your notes; you may
keep all that for the case of Navarreins against the Hospitals. It is late. I
will draw up a little petition myself, with a due allowance of
'inasmuch,' and go to the Courts myself."
This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look
back on our youth, make us say, "Those were good times."

At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at

the door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance in
the Department of the Seine. The porter told him that Monsieur
Derville had not yet come in. The old man said he had an appointment,
and was shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer,
who, notwithstanding his youth, was considered to have one of the
longest heads in Paris.
Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at
finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his
master's dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be tried on
the morrow. The clerk, not less astonished, bowed to the Colonel and
begged him to take a seat, which the client did.
"On my word, monsieur, I thought you were joking yesterday when
you named such an hour for an interview," said the old man, with the
forced mirth of a ruined man, who does his best to smile.
"The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth too," replied
the man, going on with his work. "M. Derville chooses this hour for
studying his cases, taking stock of their possibilities, arranging how to
conduct them, deciding on the line of defence. His prodigious intellect
is freer at this hour--the only time when he can have the silence and
quiet needed for the conception of good ideas. Since he entered the
profession, you are the third person to come to him for a consultation at
this midnight hour. After coming in the chief will discuss each case,
read everything, spend four or five hours perhaps over the business,
then he will ring for me and explain to me his intentions. In the
morning from ten to two he hears what his clients have to say, then he
spends the rest of his day in appointments. In the evening he goes into
society to keep up his connections. So he has only the night for
undermining his cases, ransacking the arsenal of the code, and laying
his plan of battle. He is determined never to lose a case; he loves his art.
He will not undertake every case, as his brethren do. That is his life, an
exceptionally active one. And he makes a great deal of money."
As he listened to this explanation, the old man sat silent, and his
strange face assumed an expression so bereft of intelligence, that the
clerk, after looking at him, thought no more about him.
A few minutes later Derville came in, in evening dress; his head clerk
opened the door to him, and went back to finish arranging the papers.
The young lawyer