to the poor, the mid-day hours to
criminals, the evening to law work.

Thus the gift of observation that characterized Popinot was necessarily
bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper--good feelings nipped,
fine actions in embryo, unrecognized self-sacrifice, just as he could
read at the bottom of a man's conscience the faintest outlines of a
crime, the slenderest threads of wrongdoing, and infer all the rest.

Popinot's inherited fortune was a thousand crowns a year. His wife,
sister to M. Bianchon _Senior_, a doctor at Sancerre, had brought him
about twice as much. She, dying five years since, had left her fortune
to her husband. As the salary of a supernumerary judge is not large,
and Popinot had been a fully salaried judge only for four years, we may
guess his reasons for parsimony in all that concerned his person and
mode of life, when we consider how small his means were and how great
his beneficence. Besides, is not such indifference to dress as stamped
Popinot an absent-minded man, a distinguishing mark of scientific
attainment, of art passionately pursued, of a perpetually active mind?
To complete this portrait, it will be enough to add that Popinot was one
of the few judges of the Court of the Seine on whom the ribbon of the
Legion of Honor had not been conferred.

Such was the man who had been instructed by the President of the
Second Chamber of the Court--to which Popinot had belonged since his
reinstatement among the judges in civil law--to examine the Marquis
d'Espard at the request of his wife, who sued for a Commission in
Lunacy.

The Rue du Fouarre, where so many unhappy wretches swarmed in the early
morning, would be deserted by nine o'clock, and as gloomy and squalid as
ever. Bianchon put his horse to a trot in order to find his uncle in the
midst of his business. It was not without a smile that he thought of the
curious contrast the judge's appearance would make in Madame d'Espard's
room; but he promised himself that he would persuade him to dress in a
way that should not be too ridiculous.

"If only my uncle happens to have a new coat!" said Bianchon to himself,
as he turned into the Rue du Fouarre, where a pale light shone from
the parlor windows. "I shall do well, I believe, to talk that over with
Lavienne."

At the sound of wheels half a score of startled paupers came out from
under the gateway, and took off their hats on recognizing Bianchon; for
the doctor, who treated gratuitous