ynasty. This circumstance made a break in the usages relative to the
reception of new-comers. Moreover, Desroches having taken an office
where legal documents had never yet been scribbled, had bought new
tables, and white boxes edged with blue, also new. His staff was made
up of clerks coming from other officers, without mutual ties, and
surprised, as one may say, to find themselves together. Godeschal, who
had served his apprenticeship under Maitre Derville, was not the sort of
clerk to allow the precious tradition of the "welcome" to be lost.
This "welcome" is a breakfast which every neophyte must give to the
"ancients" of the office into which he enters.

Now, about the time when Oscar came to the office, during the first six
months of Desroches' installation, on a winter evening when the work had
been got through more quickly than usual, and the clerks were warming
themselves before the fire preparatory to departure, it came
into Godeschal's head to construct and compose a Register
"architriclino-basochien," of the utmost antiquity, saved from the
fires of the Revolution, and derived through the procureur of the
Chatelet-Bordin, the immediate predecessor of Sauvaguest, the attorney,
from whom Desroches had bought his practice. The work, which was highly
approved by the other clerks, was begun by a search through all the
dealers in old paper for a register, made of paper with the mark of
the eighteenth century, duly bound in parchment, on which should be the
stamp of an order in council. Having found such a volume it was left
about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even
in what the clerks called the "chamber of deliberations"; and thus
it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged
dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had
gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising
perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were
made. The following extracts will show to the most obtuse mind the
purpose to which the office of Maitre Desroches devoted this register,
the first sixty pages of which were filled with reports of fictitious
cases. On the first page appeared as follows, in the legal spelling of
the eighteenth century:--

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so be it. This
day, the feast of our lady Saincte-Geneviesve, patron saint of
Paris, under whose protection have existed, since the year 1525