n at once stern and humorous.

"Why, yes," said Desroches, the fourth clerk, leaning across his
neighbor's copy, "he has written, '_We must dot our i's_' and spelt it
_by Gingo_!"

All the clerks shouted with laughter.

"Why! Monsieur Hure, you take 'By Jingo' for a law term, and you say you
come from Mortagne!" exclaimed Simonnin.

"Scratch it cleanly out," said the head clerk. "If the judge, whose
business it is to tax the bill, were to see such things, he would say
you were laughing at the whole boiling. You would hear of it from the
chief! Come, no more of this nonsense, Monsieur Hure! A Norman ought not
to write out an appeal without thought. It is the 'Shoulder arms!' of
the law."

"_Given in--in_?" asked Godeschal.--"Tell me when, Boucard."

"June 1814," replied the head clerk, without looking up from his work.

A knock at the office door interrupted the circumlocutions of the prolix
document. Five clerks with rows of hungry teeth, bright, mocking eyes,
and curly heads, lifted their noses towards the door, after crying all
together in a singing tone, "Come in!"

Boucard kept his face buried in a pile of papers--_broutilles_ (odds and
ends) in French law jargon--and went on drawing out the bill of costs on
which he was busy.

The office was a large room furnished with the traditional stool which
is to be seen in all these dens of law-quibbling. The stove-pipe crossed
the room diagonally to the chimney of a bricked-up fireplace; on the
marble chimney-piece were several chunks of bread, triangles of Brie
cheese, pork cutlets, glasses, bottles, and the head clerk's cup of
chocolate. The smell of these dainties blended so completely with that
of the immoderately overheated stove and the odor peculiar to offices
and old papers, that the trail of a fox would not have been perceptible.
The floor was covered with mud and snow, brought in by the clerks. Near
the window stood the desk with a revolving lid, where the head clerk
worked, and against the back of it was the second clerk's table. The
second clerk was at this moment in Court. It was between eight and nine
in the morning.

The only decoration of the office consisted in huge yellow posters,
announcing seizures of real estate, sales, settlements under trust,
final or interim judgments,--all the glory of a lawyer's office. Behind
the head clerk was an enormous room, of which each division was crammed
with bundles of papers with an infinite number of ticket