SCA. Ah! Sir, what are you talking about, and what a resolution you are going to take. Just cast a glance on the ins and outs of justice, look at the number of appeals, of stages of jurisdiction; how many embarrassing procedures; how many ravening wolves through whose claws you will have to pass; serjeants, solicitors, counsel, registrars, substitutes, recorders, judges and their clerks. There is not one of these who, for the merest trifle, couldn't knock over the best case in the world. A serjeant will issue false writs without your knowing anything of it. Your solicitor will act in concert with your adversary, and sell you for ready money. Your counsel, bribed in the same way, will be nowhere to be found when your case comes on, or else will bring forward arguments which are the merest shooting in the air, and will never come to the point. The registrar will issue writs and decrees against you for contumacy. The recorder's clerk will make away with some of your papers, or the instructing officer himself will not say what he has seen, and when, by dint of the wariest possible precautions, you have escaped all these traps, you will be amazed that your judges have been set against you either by bigots or by the women they love. Ah! Sir, save yourself from such a hell, if you can. 'Tis damnation in this world to have to go to law; and the mere thought of a lawsuit is quite enough to drive me to the other end of the world. ARG. How much does he want for the mule? SCA. For the mule, for his horse and that of his servant, for the harness and pistols, and to pay a little something he owes at the hotel, he asks altogether two hundred pistoles, Sir. ARG. Two hundred pistoles? SCA. Yes. ARG. (_walking about angrily_). No, no; we will go to law. SCA. Recollect what you are doing. ARG. I shall go to law. SCA. Don't go and expose yourself to.... ARG. I will go to law. SCA. But to go to law you need money. You must have money for the summons, you must have money for the rolls, for prosecution, attorney's introduction, solicitor's advice, evidence, and his days in court. You must have money for the consultations and pleadings of the counsel, for the right of withdrawing the briefs, and for engrossed copies of the documents. You must have money for the reports of the substitutes, for the court fees {1} at the conclusion, for registrar's enrolment, drawing up of deeds, sentences, decrees, rolls, signings, and clerks' despatches; letting alone all the presents you will have to make. Give this money to the man, and there you are well out of the whole thing. {1} _Épices_, "spices," in ancient times, equalled _sweetmeats_, and were given to the judge by the side which gained the suit, as a mark of gratitude. These _épices_ had long been changed into a compulsory payment of money when Molière wrote. In Racine's _Plaideurs_, act ii. scene vii., Petit Jean takes literally the demand of the judge for _épices_, and fetches the pepper-box to satisfy him.