A Start in Life

of the office, he was a handsome fellow of three-and-twenty, who had inherited about twelve thousand francs a year at the death of a bachelor uncle, and the son of a Madame Marest, the widow of a rich timber merchant. The future judge, filled with the laudable desire to know his business in its minutest details, placed himself under Desroches, intending to study procedure, so as to be fit to take the place of a managing clerk in two years’ time. His purpose was to go through his first stages as a pleader in Paris, so as to be fully prepared for an appointment, which, as a young man of wealth, he would certainly get. To see himself a public prosecutor, at the age of thirty, was the height of his ambition.

Though Frédéric Marest was the first cousin of Georges Marest, the practical joker of the journey to Presles, as young Husson knew this youth only by his first name, as Georges, the name of Frédéric Marest had no suggestions for him.

“Gentlemen,” said Godeschal at breakfast, addressing all his underlings, “I have to announce the advent of a new student in law; and as he is very rich, we shall, I hope, make him pay his footing handsomely.”

“Bring out the Book,” cried Oscar to the youngest clerk, “and let us be serious, pray.”

The boy clambered like a squirrel along the pigeonholes to reach a volume lying on the top shelf, so as to collect all the dust.

“It is finely colored!” said the lad, holding it up.

We must now explain the perennial pleasantry which at that time gave rise to the existence of such a book in almost every lawyer’s office. An old saying of the eighteenth century⁠—“Clerks only breakfast, farmers generally dine, and lords sup”⁠—is still true, as regards the faculty of law, of every man who has spent two or three years studying procedure under an attorney, or the technicalities of a notary’s business under some master of that branch. In the life of a lawyer’s clerk work is so unremitting, that pleasure is enjoyed all the more keenly for its rarity, and a practical joke especially is relished with rapture. This, indeed, is what explains up to a certain point Georges Marest’s behavior in Pierrotin’s chaise. The gloomiest of law-clerks is always a prey to the craving for farcical buffoonery. The instinct with which a practical joke or an occasion for fooling is jumped at and utilized among law-clerks is marvelous to behold, and is found in no other class but among artists. The studio and the lawyer’s office are, in this respect, better than the stage.

Desroches, having started in an office without a connection, had, as it were, founded a new dynasty. This “Restoration” had interrupted the traditions of the office with regard to the footing of the newcomer. Desroches, indeed, settling in quarters where stamped paper had never yet been seen, had put in new tables, and clean new file-boxes of white millboard edged with blue. His staff consisted of clerks who had come from other offices with no connection between them, and thrown together by surprise as it were.

But Godeschal, who had learned his fence under Derville, was not the man to allow the precious tradition of the Bienvenue to be lost. The Bienvenue, or welcome, is the breakfast which every new pupil must give to the “old boys” of the office to which he is articled. Now, just at the time when Oscar joined the office, in the first six months of Desroches’ career, one winter afternoon when work was got through earlier than usual, and the clerks were warming themselves before going home, Godeschal hit upon the notion of concocting a sham register of the fasti and High Festivals of the Minions of the Law, a relic of great antiquity, saved from the storms of the Revolution, and handed down from the office of the great Bordin, Attorney to the Châtelet, and the immediate predecessor of Sauvagnest, the attorney from whom Desroches had taken the office. The first thing was to find in some stationer’s old stock a ledger with paper bearing an eighteenth century watermark, and properly bound in parchment, in which to enter the decrees of the Council. Having discovered such a volume, it was tossed in the dust, in the ashpan, in the fireplace, in the kitchen; it was even left in what the clerks called the consulting-room; and it had acquired a tint of mildew that would have enchanted a bookworm, the cracks of primeval antiquity, and corners so worn that the mice might have nibbled them off. The edges were rubbed with infinite skill. The book being thus perfected, here are a few passages which will explain to the dullest the uses to which Desroches’ clerks devoted it, the first sixty pages being filled with sham reports of cases.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. So be it.

“Whereas, on this day the Festival of our Lady Saint Geneviève, patron saint of this good city of Paris, under whose protection the scribes and scriveners of this office have dwelt since the year of our Lord 1525, we, the undersigned clerks and scriveners of this office of Master Jerosme-Sebastien Bordin, successor here to the deceased Guerbet, who in his lifetime served as attorney to the Châtelet, have recognized the need for us to replace the register and archives of installations of clerks in this glorious office, being ourselves distinguished members of the Faculty of the Law, which former register is now filled with the roll and record of our well-beloved predecessors, and we have besought the keeper of the Palace archives to bestow it with those of other offices, and we have all attended High Mass in the parish church of Saint-Séverin to solemnize the opening of this our new register.

“In token whereof, we here sign and affix our names.

“Malin, Head-Clerk.

“Grevin, Second Clerk.

“Athanase Feret, Clerk.

“Jacques Huet,