as I came away I could hardly stand. My
legs shook so that I dared not venture into the street. I went back to
my room to rest. Then Coquart, who was putting away the papers of
this wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had taken the
Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she was quite crazy
about, and that she fainted away on seeing him hanging by his necktie to
the window-bar of his room. The idea that the way in which I questioned
that unhappy young fellow--who, between ourselves, was guilty in many
ways--can have led to his committing suicide has haunted me ever since I
left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the point of fainting----"

"What next? Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a
suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to
release him?" cried Madame Camusot. "Why, an examining judge in such a
case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!--That is all."

"Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out
of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our
hopes are buried in Lucien's coffin."

"Indeed?" said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.

"Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an examining judge
all my life. Before this fatal termination Monsieur de Granville was
annoyed at the turn the preliminaries had taken; his speech to our
President makes me quite certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville
is public prosecutor I shall get no promotion."

Promotion! The terrible thought, which in these days makes a judge a
mere functionary.

Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to remain. The three
or four presidents' caps satisfied the ambitions of lawyers in each
Parlement. An appointment as councillor was enough for a de Brosses or
a Mole, at Dijon as much as in Paris. This office, in itself a fortune,
required a fortune brought to it to keep it up.

In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could hope only
for three supreme appointments: those of Controller-General, Keeper of
the Seals, or Chancellor. Below the Parlement, in the lower grades,
the president of a lower Court thought himself quite of sufficient
importance to be content to fill his chair to the end of his days.

Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of Justice
in Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary, with that of a
councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How great is th