court and the monotonous hum from the bench, as cases were called on and disposed of, the invariable ‘This day week, this day week’ descending like the stroke of the guillotine and cutting short the barrister’s protest, and the entreaties of poor red-faced fellows mopping their brows before the seat of justice. ‘But, Monsieur le Président...’ ‘This day week.’ Sometimes from the back of the court would come a cry and a despairing movement of a pair of arms, ‘I am here, M. le Président, but I can’t get through, there’s such a crowd...’ ‘This day week.’ When a man has beheld such clearances as these, and seen the symbolic scales operate with such dexterity, he gets a vivid impression of French justice; it is not unlike the sensation of hearing the funeral service raced through in a hurry by a strange priest over a pauper’s grave. The voice of the President called for the Fage case. Complete silence followed in the court, and even on the staircase landing where people had climbed on to benches to see. Then after a short consultation on the bench the witnesses filed out through a dense crowd of gowns on their way to the little room reserved for them, a dreary empty place, badly lighted by glass windows that had once been red, and looking out on a narrow alley. Astier-Réhu, who was to be called first, did not go in, but walked up and down in the gloomy passage between the witness-room and the court. Freydet wished to stay with him, but he said in a colourless voice, ‘No, no, let me alone, I want to be alone.’ So the candidate joined the other witnesses who were standing in little knots--Baron Huchenard, Bos the palaeographer, Delpech the chemist, of the Académie des Sciences, some experts in handwriting, and two or three pretty girls, the originals of some of the photographs that adorned the walls of Fage’s room, delighted at the notoriety that the proceedings would bring them, laughing loudly and displaying startling little spring hats strangely different from the linen cap and woollen mittens of the caretaker at the Cour des Comptes. Védrine also had been summoned, and Freydet came and sat by him on the wide ledge of the open window. The two friends, whirled apart in the opposing currents that divide men’s lives in Paris, had not met since the summer before until the recent funeral of poor Germaine de Freydet Védrine pressed his friend’s hand and asked how he was, how he felt after so terrible a blow. Freydet shrugged his shoulders, ‘It’s hard, very hard, but after all I’m used to it.’ Then, as Védrine stared in wonder at his selfish stoicism, he added, ‘Just think, that’s twice in one year that I have been fooled.’ The blow, the only blow, that he remembered, was his failure to get Ripault-Babin’s seat, which he had lately missed, as he had missed Loisillon’s before. Presently he understood, sighed deeply, and said, ‘Ah, yes, poor Germaine!’ She had taken so much trouble all the winter about his unlucky candidature.