was within
half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the clerk. Maitre Voigt's room
was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled walls, like a toy-
chamber. According to the seasons of the year, roses, sunflowers,
hollyhocks, peeped in at the windows. Maitre Voigt's bees hummed through
the office all the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it
frequently in their day's work, as if honey were to be made from Maitre
Voigt's sweet disposition. A large musical box on the chimney-piece
often trilled away at the Overture to Fra Diavolo, or a Selection from
William Tell, with a chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by
force on the entrance of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again the
moment his back was turned.

"Courage, courage, my good fellow!" said Maitre Voigt, patting Obenreizer
on the knee, in a fatherly and comforting way. "You will begin a new
life to-morrow morning in my office here."

Obenreizer--dressed in mourning, and subdued in manner--lifted his hand,
with a white handkerchief in it, to the region of his heart. "The
gratitude is here," he said. "But the words to express it are not here."

"Ta-ta-ta! Don't talk to me about gratitude!" said Maitre Voigt. "I
hate to see a man oppressed. I see you oppressed, and I hold out my hand
to you by instinct. Besides, I am not too old yet, to remember my young
days. Your father sent me my first client. (It was on a question of
half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any grapes.) Do I owe nothing
to your father's son? I owe him a debt of friendly obligation, and I pay
it to you. That's rather neatly expressed, I think," added Maitre Voigt,
in high good humour with himself. "Permit me to reward my own merit with
a pinch of snuff!"

Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he were not even
worthy to see the notary take snuff.

"Do me one last favour, sir," he said, when he raised his eyes. "Do not
act on impulse. Thus far, you have only a general knowledge of my
position. Hear the case for and against me, in its details, before you
take me into your office. Let my claim on your benevolence be recognised
by your sound reason as well as by your excellent heart. In _that_ case,
I may hold up my head against the bitterest of my enemies, and build
myself a new reputation on the ruins of the character I have lost."

"As you will," said Maitre Voigt. "You speak well, my son. You will be
a fine lawyer one