which he invariably commenced by stating that he possessed more than five millions (francs) in the United States; that it would be easy for him to pay twenty times the amount of the claim, but that it was unjust, and his conscience did not permit him to purchase his liberty by a dastardly sacrifice. Swan was nearly fifty-two years of age when he was arrested; he was seventy-four at the period of his release, which he owed to the Revolution of July. He died two months afterwards. But to return to M. Berryer. After de scribing the mode of becoming an advocate, which in those days was much the same as at the present day, the author tells the fol lowing anecdotes : — "Le Maitre, a celebrated advocate of the age preceding, used to amuse himself during the vacation by going into the country, in cognito, and pleading causes for the peas antry. On one occasion he made such an impression that the provincial magistrate told him he did wrong to waste his splendid abilities on trifling matters in the provinces. ' Go to Paris, you will there find a fitting field for them; you will become the rival of the famous Le Maitre.'" On another occasion Le Maitre, having introduced several Latin quotations with the view of embarrassing the judge, provoked a curious addition to the judgment. " We fine the advocate a crown for having ad dressed us in a language which we do not understand." An advocate, by way of accompaniment to his speech, was flourishing about his hand in such a manner as to show off a magnifi cent diamond ring. He was young, goodlooking, and pleading for a lady of quality who had demanded a separation from her liege lord. The husband, who happened to be present, interrupted him in the midst of his appeal, and turning to the magistrates, said : " My lords, you will appreciate the zeal which M is displaying against me, and above all the purity of the grounds on which he relies, when you are informed that
the diamond ring he wears is the very one which I placed on "my wife's finger on the day of that union she is so anxious to dis solve." The court, says M. Berryer, rose immediately; the cause was lost, and the advocate never had another. What adds to the point of the catastrophe is the fact that it does not appear that the husband's state ment had the slightest foundation, or that he entertained any suspicion of the sort Clever graphic sketches of the leading lawyers of the day are given by M. Berryer; but these possess little interest for Ameri can readers, to whom the very names of most of them must necessarily be unknown. Some specific facts, however, are communicated re garding Gerbier, the Erskine of the French bar, when M. Berryer first joined it. Gerbier had a fine Roman head, with a voice of great compass, and his action was peculiarly impressive. He consequently ex celled in passages where a dramatic effect was to be produced; and these may almost always be introduced with little risk of fail ure in France. Thus, in his defence of the brothers Du Queyssat, tried for a cowardly murder, he introduced the chapel of the Pa latinate, in which the sword of one of them, a gallant soldier, had been suspended by the express command of his general, and de manded if this could be the same sword which had been basely turned against the murdered man. The peroration of his speech for the Bishop of Noyon, prosecuted by his own chapter, affords another example of his style : — "It once fell to the lot of Constantine the Great to receive at his imperial levee several deputies from the clergy, who came to denounce the shamefully irreligious conduct of the primate, their chief. To these virulent accusations, the prince, after having listened to them with the most conscientious attention, made answer : " My duty and yours are to place no faith in suspicions, which the impious may be anxious to raise against the sacred character of the primate; so that — to suppose an impossibility — if I sur
