at parlor."

"I cannot bear to keep them waiting, poor souls!--Well, and what do you
want of me?"

"I have come to ask you to dine to-morrow with the Marquise d'Espard."

"A relation of ours?" asked Popinot, with such genuine absence of mind
that Bianchon laughed.

"No, uncle; the Marquise d'Espard is a high and puissant lady, who has
laid before the Courts a petition desiring that a Commission in Lunacy
should sit on her husband, and you are appointed----"

"And you want me to dine with her! Are you mad?" said the lawyer, taking
up the code of proceedings. "Here, only read this article, prohibiting
any magistrate's eating or drinking in the house of either of two
parties whom he is called upon to decide between. Let her come and see
me, your Marquise, if she has anything to say to me. I was, in fact,
to go to examine her husband to-morrow, after working the case up
to-night."

He rose, took up a packet of papers that lay under a weight where he
could see it, and after reading the title, he said:

"Here is the affidavit. Since you take an interest in this high and
puissant lady, let us see what she wants."

Popinot wrapped his dressing-gown across his body, from which it was
constantly slipping and leaving his chest bare; he sopped his bread in
the half-cold coffee, and opened the petition, which he read, allowing
himself to throw in a parenthesis now and then, and some discussions, in
which his nephew took part:--

"'To Monsieur the President of the Civil Tribunal of the Lower Court of
the Department of the Seine, sitting at the Palais de Justice.

"'Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, wife of
M. Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte de Negrepelisse, Marquis
d'Espard'--a very good family--'landowner, the said Mme. d'Espard living
in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M. d'Espard
in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22,'--to be sure, the
President told me he lived in this part of the town--'having for her
solicitor Maitre Desroches'--Desroches! a pettifogging jobber, a man
looked down upon by his brother lawyers, and who does his clients no
good--"

"Poor fellow!" said Bianchon, "unluckily he has no money, and he rushes
round like the devil in holy water--That is all."

"'Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President, that for a
year past the moral and intellectual powers of her husband, M. d'Espard,
have undergone so serious a change, that at the