Three years earlier there had been an appalling railway accident between Cordova and Seville. Two tightly packed trains had come into collision, with results that had prevented even the Spanish officials from hushing up the _contretemps_, and had sent an electric wave of shudders over the whole news-reading world. Among the second division of its victims, the dangerously, even mortally, wounded, there appeared one name at least which added, in England, at any rate, to the sensational interest which for nearly a week the affair induced. It was that of the most prominent coming man of the day, Paul Gastineau, K.C., M.P., a man who had indeed arrived and who was bound, in French phrase, to go far. Lay politicians were fond of quoting one another that a man of such marvellous brain-power and capability for hard work had the easy and certain reversion to the Woolsack: members of his own branch of the profession, if they did not agree with the forecast, let it pass unchallenged; while there were many grains of intentional truth in the chaff indulged in by the other branch when they would declare that the solicitor, who, having a fighting case on hand, failed to retain Paul Gastineau, laid himself open to an action for negligence. For Gastineau was above all things a fighter, and one who fought with his brains as well as with his tongue; a distinction which they who know courts of law will readily appreciate. An awkward adversary, ever in deadly earnest, who always fenced with the button off; his enemies and defeated opponents, and they were many, said not too scrupulously; but he fought to win, and usually did win, leaving mere niceties and quibbles to the schoolmen; and to have the knack of winning means much, if not everything. It meant much for Paul Gastineau. He became the most talked about man at the Bar, and his enemies being too human to let his praises pass in silence, simply added their voices to the babble that made him known. Our forefathers were stupid enough to regard the envy, hatred and malice that attend on success as something of a drawback; a toll, they called it, paid for being eminent: we know better, and nowadays the wisely successful man regards his detractors as a valuable asset in the working capital on which he pursues the business of eminence.