yself with varying accent. It seemed as though I had known the name
before. It carried with it a suggestion of the novels of Stanley J.
Weyman, of books on old towns and the chateaux and cathedrals of France.
I wondered who the devil Charles Julius Francis de Nevers could be.

Of course, if one answered all the letters one gets from the Tombs it
would keep a secretary busy most of the working hours of the day, and if
one acceded to all the various requests the prisoners make to interview
them personally or to see their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers,
sweethearts and wives, a prosecutor might as well run an intelligence
office and be done with it. But as I re-read the note I began to have a
sneaking feeling of curiosity to see what Charles Julius Francis de
Nevers looked like, so I departed from the usual rule of my office, rang
for a messenger and directed him to ascertain the full name of the
prisoner from whom the note had come, the crime with which he was
charged, and the date of his incarceration, also to supply me at once
with copies of the indictment and the complaint; then I instructed him
to have De Nevers brought over as soon as he could be got into shape.

I had almost forgotten that I was expecting a visitor when, a couple of
hours later, an undersized deputy-sheriff entered my office and reported
that he had a prisoner in his custody for whom I had sent to the Tombs.
Glancing up from my desk I saw standing behind his keeper a tall and
distinguished-looking man in fashionably cut garments, whose well shaped
head and narrow face, thin aquiline nose, and carefully trimmed pointed
beard seemed to bespeak somewhat different antecedents from those of the
ordinary occupant of a cell in the City Prison. I should have
instinctively risen from my chair and offered my aristocratic looking
visitor a chair had not the keeper unconsciously brought me to a
realization of my true position by remarking:

"Say, Counsellor, I guess while you're talking to his nibs I'll step out
into the hall and take a smoke."

"Certainly," said I, glad to be rid of him, "I will be responsible for
the--er--prisoner."

Then, as the keeper hesitated in putting his suggestion into execution,
I reached into the upper right-hand drawer of my desk, produced two of
what are commonly known in the parlance of the Criminal Courts Building
as "cigars" and handed them to him.

"Well," said I, after the keeper had departed closing the door behind