ior
executioner employed by the county court. But the word "lawyer"
(homme de loi) is a depreciatory term applied to the legal profession.
Consuming professional jealousy finds similar disparaging epithets
for fellow-travelers in every walk of life, and every calling has its
special insult. The scorn flung into the words _homme de loi, homme
de lettres_, is wanting in the plural form, which may be used without
offence; but in Paris every profession, learned or unlearned, has its
_omega_, the individual who brings it down to the level of the lowest
class; and the written law has its connecting link with the custom
right of the streets. There are districts where the pettifogging man of
business, known as Lawyer So-and-So, is still to be found. M. Fraisier
was to the member of the Incorporated Law Society as the money-lender
of the Halles, offering small loans for a short period at an exorbitant
interest, is to the great capitalist.

Working people, strange to say are as shy of officials as of fashionable
restaurants, they take advice from irregular sources as they turn into
a little wineshop to drink. Each rank in life finds its own level, and
there abides. None but a chosen few care to climb the heights, few can
feel at ease in the presence of their betters, or take their place among
them, like a Beaumarchais letting fall the watch of the great lord who
tried to humiliate him. And if there are few who can even rise to
a higher social level, those among them who can throw off their
swaddling-clothes are rare and great exceptions.

At six o'clock the next morning Mme. Cibot stood in the Rue de la Perle;
she was making a survey of the abode of her future adviser, Lawyer
Fraisier. The house was one of the old-fashioned kind formerly inhabited
by small tradespeople and citizens with small means. A cabinetmaker's
shop occupied almost the whole of the ground floor, as well as the
little yard behind, which was covered with his workshops and warehouses;
the small remaining space being taken up by the porter's lodge and the
passage entry in the middle. The staircase walls were half rotten with
damp and covered with saltpetre to such a degree that the house seemed
to be stricken with leprosy.

Mme. Cibot went straight to the porter's lodge, and there encountered
one of the fraternity, a shoemaker, his wife, and two small children,
all housed in a room ten feet square, lighted from the yard at the back.
La Cibot mentioned her