estimation of
the habitans, so long as his law smelt strong in the nostrils of
their opponents in litigation. They rather prided themselves upon the
roughness of their travelling notary.

The reputation of Master Pothier dit Robin was, of course, very great
among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and from
seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations, marriage
contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had
a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect
amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and
sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of
a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own,
which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of
Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen.
Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is full
of seeds, and usually kept all parties in hot water and litigation
for the rest of their days. If he did happen now and then to settle a
dispute between neighbors, he made ample amends for it by setting half
the rest of the parish by the ears.

Master Pothier's nose, sharp and fiery as if dipped in red ink, almost
touched the sheet of paper on the table before him, as he wrote down
from the dictation of Dame Bedard the articles of a marriage contract
between her pretty daughter, Zoe, and Antoine La Chance, the son of a
comfortable but keen widow of Beauport.

Dame Bedard had shrewdly availed herself of the presence of Master
Pothier, and in payment of a night's lodging at the Crown of France, to
have him write out the contract of marriage in the absence of Dame
La Chance, the mother of Antoine, who would, of course, object to the
insertion of certain conditions in the contract which Dame Bedard was
quite determined upon as the price of Zoe's hand and fortune.

"There! Dame Bedard!" cried Master Pothier, sticking the pen behind his
ear, after a magnificent flourish at the last word, "there is a marriage
contract fit to espouse King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba! A dowry of
a hundred livres tournoises, two cows, and a feather bed, bedstead, and
chest of linen! A donation entre vifs!"

"A what? Master Pothier, now mind! are you sure that is the right word
of the grimoire?" cried Dame Bedard, instinctively perceiving that here
lay the very point of the contract. "You know I only give on condi