usy humming swarm of
would-be barristers. Behind the President's bench was Danjou, standing
with folded arms, and showing above the audience and the judges the hard
angles of his regular stage-weathered countenance, everywhere to be seen
during the last forty years as the type of social commonplace in all
its manifold manifestations. With the exception of Astier-Rehu and Baron
Huchenard, who were summoned as witnesses, he was the only Academician
bold enough to face the irreverent remarks that might be expected in the
speech of Fage's counsel, Margery, the dreaded wit, who convulses the
whole assembly and the bench with the mere sound of his nasal 'Well.'
Some fun was to be expected; the whole atmosphere of the place announced
it, the erratic tilt of the barristers' caps, the gleam in the eyes and
curl in the corners of the mouths of people giving one another little
anticipatory smiles. There were endless anecdotes current about the
achievements in gallantry of the little humpback who had just been
brought to the prisoner's box and, lifting his long well-greased head,
cast into the court over the bar the conquering glance of a manifest
ladies' man. Stories were told of compromising letters, of an account
drawn up by the prisoner mentioning right out the names of two or three
well-known ladies of fashion, the regular names dragged again and again
into every unsavoury case. There was a copy of the production going
the rounds of the seats reserved for the press, a simple conceited
autobiography containing none of the revelations imputed to it by public
rumour. Fage had beguiled the tedium of confinement by writing for the
court the story of his life. He was born, he said, near Vassy (Haute
Marne), as straight as anybody--so they all say--but a fall from a horse
at fifteen had bent and inflected his spine. His taste for gallantry had
developed somewhat late in life when he was working at a bookseller's in
the Passage des Panoramas. As his deformity interfered with his success,
he tried to find some way of getting plenty of money. The story of
his love affairs alternating with that of his forgeries and the means
employed, with descriptions of ink and of parchment, resulted in such
headings to his chapters as 'My first victim--For a red ribbon--The
gingerbread fair--I make the acquaintance of Astier-Rehu--The mysterious
ink--I defy the chemists of the Institute.' This brief epitome is enough
to show the combination, the humpbac