“He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped from the Jardin des Plantes,” said Couture. “He was lean and red-haired, his eyes were the color of Spanish snuff, and his complexion was harsh. He looked cold and phlegmatic. He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to the orphan, and a terror to his clerks; they were not allowed to waste a minute. Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-tongued, never flying into a passion, rancorous in his judicial way.” “But there is goodness in him,” cried Finot; “he is devoted to his friends. The first thing he did was to take Godeschal, Mariette’s brother, as his head-clerk.” “At Paris,” said Blondet, “there are attorneys of two shades. There is the honest man attorney; he abides within the province of the law, pushes on his cases, neglects no one, never runs after business, gives his clients his honest opinion, and makes them compromise on doubtful points--he is a Derville, in short. Then there is the starveling attorney, to whom anything seems good provided that he is sure of expenses; he will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but planets; he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. If one of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin’s tricks once too often, the guild forces him to sell his connection. Desroches, our friend Desroches, understood the full resources of a trade carried on in a beggarly way enough by poor devils; he would buy up causes of men who feared to lose the day; he plunged into chicanery with a fixed determination to make money by it. He was right; he did his business very honestly. He found influence among men in public life by getting them out of awkward complications; there was our dear les Lupeaulx, for instance, whose position was so deeply compromised. And Desroches stood in need of influence; for when he began, he was anything but well looked on at the court, and he who took so much trouble to rectify the errors of his clients was often in trouble himself. See now, Bixiou, to go back to the subject--How came Desroches to be in the church?” “‘D’Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand francs,’ Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches. “‘Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much _they_ are worth,’ put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased. “‘Who?’ “‘That fat rogue Nucingen; he will go as far as the cemetery; d’Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude he put the old man’s capital into his business.’ “‘The widow will soon feel a great difference.’ “‘What do you mean?’ “‘Well, d’Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don’t laugh, people are looking at us.’ “‘Look here comes du Tillet; he is very late. The epistle is just beginning.’ “‘He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.’ “‘Is it possible?’ asked Desroches; ‘why, he is tied more than ever to Mme. Roguin.’ “‘_Tied_--he?--You do not know him.’