"Dodd père, Monsieur le Président," interposed my lawyer, who seemed most eager to save me from the consequences of my rashness. "Ah! he is Dodd père," said the president, solemnly; and now he and his two colleagues adjusted their spectacles, and gazed at me long and attentively; in fact, with such earnestness did they stare that I began to feel my character of Dodd père was rather an imposing kind of performance. "Enfin," said the president, with a faint sigh, as though the reasoning process had been rather a fatiguing one,--"enfin! Dodd père is the father of Dodd fils, the respondent." Vanhoegen bowed submissive assent, and muttered, as I thought, some little flattery about the judicial acuteness and perspicuity. "Let him be sworn," said the president; and accordingly I held up my hand, while the clerk recited something with a humdrum rapidity that I guessed must mean an oath. "You are called Dodd père?" said the Attorney-General, addressing me. "I find I am so called here, but I never was so before," said I, tartly. "He means that the appellation is not usual in his own country," said one of the judges,--a small, red-eyed man, with pock-marks. "Put it down," observed the president, gravely. "The witness informs us that he is only called Dodd." "Kenny James Dodd, Monsieur," cried I, interrupting. "Dodd--dit Kenny James," dictated the small judge; and the amanuensis took it down. "And you swear you are the father of Dodd fils?" asked the president. I suppose that the adage of a wise child knowing his own father cuts both ways; but I answered boldly, that I 'd swear to the best of my belief,--a reservation, however, that excited a discussion of three-quarters of an hour, the point being at last ruled in my favor. I am bound to say that there was a great deal of legal learning displayed in the controversy,--a vast variety of authorities cited, from King David downwards; and although at one time matters seemed going against me, the red-eyed man turned the balance in my favor, and it was agreed that I was the father of my own son. If I knew but all, it might have been better for me there had been a hitch in the case. But I am anticipating. There now arose another dispute, on a point of law, I believe, and which was, what degree of responsibility--there were fourteen degrees, it seems, in the Pandects--I stood in as regarded the present suit. From the turn the debate took, I began to suspect we might all of us have to plead to our responsibilities in the other world ere it could be finished; but the red-eyed man, who seemed the shrewdest of them all, cut the matter short by proposing that I should be invited--that's the phrase--to say so much as I pleased in the question before the Court. "Yes, yes," assented the president. "Let him relate the affair." And the whole bar and the audience seemed to reecho the words.