e difference! In
these days, when money is the universal social guarantee, magistrates
are not required to have--as they used to have--fine private fortunes:
hence we see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at
once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from other positions
than those which ought to give them all their importance.

In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for promotion as men
do in the army, or in a Government office.

This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his independence, is
so well known and so natural, and its effects are so evident, that the
law inevitably loses some of its majesty in the eyes of the public. And,
in fact, the salaries paid by the State makes priests and magistrates
mere _employes_. Steps to be gained foster ambition, ambition engenders
subservience to power, and modern equality places the judge and the
person to be judged in the same category at the bar of society. And so
the two pillars of social order, Religion and Justice, are lowered in
this nineteenth century, which asserts itself as progressive in all
things.

"And why should you never be promoted?" said Amelie Camusot.

She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the necessity of
reviving the energies of the man who embodied her ambitions, and on whom
she could play as on an instrument.

"Why despair?" she went on, with a shrug that sufficiently expressed
her indifference as to the prisoner's end. "This suicide will delight
Lucien's two enemies, Madame d'Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du
Chatelet. Madame d'Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the
Seals; through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and tell
him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of the law is on
your side, what have you to fear from the president of your Court or the
public prosecutor?"

"But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?" cried the poor man. "Madame de
Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her madness is my doing, they say."

"Well, if she is out of her mind, O judge devoid of judgment," said
Madame Camusot, laughing, "she can do you no harm.--Come, tell me all
the incidents of the day."

"Bless me!" said Camusot, "just as I had cross-questioned the unhappy
youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled Spanish priest is really
Jacques Collin, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy
sent me a note by a servant begging me not to examine him. I