nform the god who
presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from Gavrillac humbly
begged an audience on an affair of gravity.

That the god condescended to see him at all was probably due to the
grave complexion of the hour. At long length he was escorted up the
broad stone staircase, and ushered into a spacious, meagrely furnished
anteroom, to make one of a waiting crowd of clients, mostly men.

There he spent another half-hour, and employed the time in considering
exactly what he should say. This consideration made him realize the
weakness of the case he proposed to set before a man whose views of law
and morality were coloured by his social rank.

At last he was ushered through a narrow but very massive and richly
decorated door into a fine, well-lighted room furnished with enough gilt
and satin to have supplied the boudoir of a lady of fashion.

It was a trivial setting for a King's Lieutenant, but about the King's
Lieutenant there was--at least to ordinary eyes--nothing trivial. At the
far end of the chamber, to the right of one of the tall windows that
looked out over the inner court, before a goat-legged writing-table with
Watteau panels, heavily encrusted with ormolu, sat that exalted being.
Above a scarlet coat with an order flaming on its breast, and a billow
of lace in which diamonds sparkled like drops of water, sprouted the
massive powdered head of M. de Lesdiguieres. It was thrown back to scowl
upon this visitor with an expectant arrogance that made Andre-Louis
wonder almost was a genuflexion awaited from him.

Perceiving a lean, lantern-jawed young man, with straight, lank black
hair, in a caped riding-coat of brown cloth, and yellow buckskin
breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon that august
visage deepened until it brought together the thick black eyebrows above
the great hooked nose.

"You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an important
communication," he growled. It was a peremptory command to make this
communication without wasting the valuable time of a King's Lieutenant,
of whose immense importance it conveyed something more than a hint. M.
de Lesdiguieres accounted himself an imposing personality, and he had
every reason to do so, for in his time he had seen many a poor devil
scared out of all his senses by the thunder of his voice.

He waited now to see the same thing happen to this youthful lawyer from
Gavrillac. But he waited in vain.

Andre-Lo