n of
making themselves agreeable to an influential elector, or to the deputy,
or to the minister who distributes appointments and favors. Universal
suffrage is the god and the tyrant of the magistrate. So you are
right--and I am not wrong.

ARDEUIL. Nothing can deprive us of our independence.

LA BOUZOLE. That is so. But, as Monsieur de Tocqueville once remarked,
we can offer it up as a sacrifice.

ARDEUIL. You are a misanthrope. There are magistrates whom no promise of
any kind--

LA BOUZOLE. Yes, there are. Those who are not needy or who have no
ambitions. Yes, there are obscure persons who devote their whole lives
to their professions and who never ask for anything for themselves. But
you can take my word for it that they are the exceptions, and that our
Court of Mauleon, which you yourself have seen, represents about the
average of our judicial morality. I exaggerate, you think? Well! Let us
suppose that in all France there are only fifty Courts like this.
Suppose there are only twenty--suppose there is only one. It is still
one too many! Why, my young friend, what sort of an idea have you got of
the magistracy?

ARDEUIL. It frightens me.

LA BOUZOLE. You are speaking seriously?

ARDEUIL. Certainly.

LA BOUZOLE. Then why did you become a substitute?

ARDEUIL. Through no choice of my own! My people pushed me into the
profession.

LA BOUZOLE. Yes. People look on the magistracy as a career. That is to
say, from the moment you enter it you have only one object--to get on.
[_A pause_]

ARDEUIL. Yet it would be a noble thing--to dispense justice tempered
with mercy.

LA BOUZOLE. Yes--it should be. [_A pause_] Do you want the advice of a
man who has for forty years been a judge of the third class?

ARDEUIL. I should value it.

LA BOUZOLE. Send in your resignation. You have mistaken your vocation.
You wear the wrong robe. The man who attempts to put into practice the
ideas you have expressed must wear the priest's cassock.

ARDEUIL [_as though to himself_] Yes--but for that one must have a
simple heart--a heart open to faith.

BUNERAT [_who is with the others_] If only we had the luck to have a
deputy of the department for Keeper of the Seals! Just for a week!

LA BOUZOLE [_to Ardeuil_] There, my boy, that's the sort of thing one
has to think about.

THE MANSERVANT [_entering_] From his Honor the President of Assizes.
[_He gives Vagret a letter_]

VAGRET. He isn't coming?

MADAME VAGRET [_after