emember, from four
to six weeks; a reconciliation case never came before me again. There
was a certain necessity for the ordinance respecting proceedings in
divorce cases, to which Frederick William IV. was obliged to confine
himself after his attempts to introduce a _law_ for the substantial
alteration of the Marriage Law had foundered upon the opposition of
the Council of State. With regard to this matter it may be mentioned
that, as a result of this ordinance, the Attorney-General was first
introduced into those provinces in which the old Prussian common law
prevailed as _defensor matrimonii_, and to prevent collusion between
the parties.

More inviting was the subsequent stage of petty cases, where the
untrained young jurist at least acquired practice in listening to
pleadings and examining witnesses, but where more use was made of him
as a drudge than was met by the resulting benefit to his instruction.
The locality and the procedure partook somewhat of the restless bustle
of a railway manager's work. The space in which the leading _Rath_ and
the three or four _Auscultators_ sat with their backs to the public
was surrounded by a wooden screen, and round about the four-cornered
recess formed thereby surged an ever-changing and more or less noisy
mob of parties to the suits.

My impression of institutions and persons was not essentially modified
when I had been transferred to the Administration. In order to
abbreviate the detour to diplomacy, I applied to a Rhenish government,
that of Aachen, where the course could be gone through in two years,
whereas in the "old" provinces at least three years were required.[29]

I can well imagine that in making the appointments to the Rhenish
Governing Board in 1816 the same procedure was adopted as at the
organization of Elsass-Lothringen in 1871. The authorities who had to
contribute a portion of their staff would not be likely to respond to
the call of state requirements by putting their best foot foremost to
accomplish the difficult task of assimilating a newly acquired
population, but would have chosen those members of their offices whose
departure was desired by their superiors or wished by themselves; in
the board were to be found former secretaries of prefectures and other
relics of the French administration. The _personnel_ did not all
correspond to the ideal which floated unwarrantably enough before my
eyes at twenty-one, and still less was this the case with the det