hink he must
be employed in some registry; he is here as a mere manual laborer. This
third person gives me the idea of being very much interested in the
fortunes of Signore Porfirio Zampini, for on each occasion, when his
duties required him to bring us documents, he whispered in my ear:

"If you only knew, my lord, what a man Zampini is! what a noble heart,
what a paladin!"

Take notice that this "paladin" is a macaroni-seller, strongly suspected
of trying to hoodwink the French courts.

Amid the awful heat which penetrated the windows, the doors, even the
sun-baked walls, we had to listen to, read, and compare documents.
Gnats of a ferocious kind, hatched by thousands in the hangings of this
hothouse, flew around our perspiring heads. Their buzzing got the upper
hand at intervals when the clerk's voice grew weary and, diminishing in
volume, threatened to fade away into snores.

The little judge rapped on the table with his paperknife and urged the
reader afresh upon his wild career. My colleague from the Record
Office showed no sign of weariness. Motionless, attentive, classing the
smallest papers in his orderly mind, he did not even feel the' gnats
swooping upon the veins in his hands, stinging them, sucking them, and
flying off red and distended with his blood.

I sat, both literally and metaphorically, on hot coals. Just as I came
into the room, the man from the Record Office handed me a letter which
had arrived at the hotel while I was out at lunch. It was a letter from
Lampron, in a large, bulky envelope. Clearly something important must
have happened.

My fate, perhaps, was settled, and was in the letter, while I knew it
not. I tried to get it out of my inside pocket several times, for to me
it was a far more interesting document than any that concerned Zampini's
action. I pined to open it furtively, and read at least the first few
lines. A moment would have sufficed for me to get at the point of this
long communication. But at every attempt the judge's eyes turned slowly
upon me between their half-closed lids, and made me desist. No--a
thousand times no! This smooth-tongued, wily Italian shall have no
excuse for proving that the French, who have already such a reputation
for frivolity, are a nation without a conscience, incapable of
fulfilling the mission with which they are charged.

And yet.... there came a moment when he turned his back and began to
sort a fresh bundle with the man of records. Here w