ained for the earlier cases should not come
out in time.

A very curious study would be that of the differences between these
various black gowns, pacing the immense hall in threes, or sometimes
in fours, their persistent talk filling the place with a loud, echoing
hum--a hall well named indeed, for this slow walk exhausts the lawyers
as much as the waste of words. But such a study has its place in the
volumes destined to reveal the life of Paris pleaders.

Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she laughed in her
sleeve at some of the pleasantries she overheard, and finally succeeded
in attracting the attention of Massol, a young lawyer whose time was
more taken up by the _Police Gazette_ than by clients, and who came up
with a laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so elegantly
scented and so handsomely dressed.

Asie put on a little, thin voice to explain to this obliging gentleman
that she appeared in answer to a summons from a judge named Camusot.

"Oh! in the Rubempre case?"

So the affair had its name already.

"Oh, it is not my affair. It is my maid's, a girl named Europe, who was
with me twenty-four hours, and who fled when she saw my servant bring in
a piece of stamped paper."

Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping in the
chimney-corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out the story of her woes
with her first husband, one of the three Directors of the land revenue.
She consulted the young lawyer as to whether she would do well to enter
on a lawsuit with her son-in-law, the Comte de Gross-Narp, who made her
daughter very miserable, and whether the law allowed her to dispose of
her fortune.

In spite of all his efforts, Massol could not be sure whether the
summons were addressed to the mistress or the maid. At the first moment
he had only glanced at this legal document of the most familiar aspect;
for, to save time, it is printed, and the magistrates' clerks have only
to fill in the blanks left for the names and addresses of the witnesses,
the hour for which they are called, and so forth.

Asie made him tell her all about the Palais, which she knew more
intimately than the lawyer did. Finally, she inquired at what hour
Monsieur Camusot would arrive.

"Well, the examining judges generally are here by about ten o'clock."

"It is now a quarter to ten," said she, looking at a pretty little
watch, a perfect gem of goldsmith's work, which made Massol say to
himself: