gued, never flying into a
passion, rancorous in his judicial way."

"But there is goodness in him," cried Finot; "he is devoted to his
friends. The first thing he did was to take Godeschal, Mariette's
brother, as his head-clerk."

"At Paris," said Blondet, "there are attorneys of two shades. There
is the honest man attorney; he abides within the province of the law,
pushes on his cases, neglects no one, never runs after business, gives
his clients his honest opinion, and makes them compromise on doubtful
points--he is a Derville, in short. Then there is the starveling
attorney, to whom anything seems good provided that he is sure of
expenses; he will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but
planets; he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and
take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. If one
of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin's tricks once too often,
the guild forces him to sell his connection. Desroches, our friend
Desroches, understood the full resources of a trade carried on in a
beggarly way enough by poor devils; he would buy up causes of men
who feared to lose the day; he plunged into chicanery with a fixed
determination to make money by it. He was right; he did his business
very honestly. He found influence among men in public life by getting
them out of awkward complications; there was our dear les Lupeaulx, for
instance, whose position was so deeply compromised. And Desroches stood
in need of influence; for when he began, he was anything but well looked
on at the court, and he who took so much trouble to rectify the errors
of his clients was often in trouble himself. See now, Bixiou, to go back
to the subject--How came Desroches to be in the church?"

"'D'Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand francs,'
Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches.

"'Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much _they_ are worth,'
put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased.

"'Who?'

"'That fat rogue Nucingen; he will go as far as the cemetery;
d'Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude he put the old
man's capital into his business.'

"'The widow will soon feel a great difference.'

"'What do you mean?'

"'Well, d'Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don't laugh, people
are looking at us.'

"'Look here comes du Tillet; he is very late. The epistle is just
beginning.'

"'He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.'

"'Is i