of 'inasmuch,' and go to the Courts myself."

This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look
back on our youth, make us say, "Those were good times."



At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at
the door of Maitre Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance
in the Department of the Seine. The porter told him that Monsieur
Derville had not yet come in. The old man said he had an appointment,
and was shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer,
who, notwithstanding his youth, was considered to have one of the
longest heads in Paris.

Having rung, the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at
finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his
master's dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be
tried on the morrow. The clerk, not less astonished, bowed to the
Colonel and begged him to take a seat, which the client did.

"On my word, monsieur, I thought you were joking yesterday when you
named such an hour for an interview," said the old man, with the
forced mirth of a ruined man, who does his best to smile.

"The clerks were joking, but they were speaking the truth too,"
replied the man, going on with his work. "M. Derville chooses this
hour for studying his cases, taking stock of their possibilities,
arranging how to conduct them, deciding on the line of defence. His
prodigious intellect is freer at this hour--the only time when he can