But what comfort can the
magistrate find, the police agent, or the attorney, who spend their
lives in investigating the basest schemes of self-interest, the social
monster whose only regret is when it fails, but on whom repentance
never dawns?
"One-half of society spends its life in watching the other half. A
very old friend of mine is an attorney, now retired, who told me that
for fifteen years past notaries and lawyers have distrusted their
clients quite as much as their adversaries. Your son is a pleader; has
he never found himself compromised by the client for whom he held a
brief?"
"Very often," said Victorin, with a smile.
"And what is the cause of this deep-seated evil?" asked the Baroness.
"The decay of religion," said Bianchon, "and the pre-eminence of
finance, which is simply solidified selfishness. Money used not to be
everything; there were some kinds of superiority that ranked above it
--nobility, genius, service done to the State. But nowadays the law
takes wealth as the universal standard, and regards it as the measure
of public capacity. Certain magistrates are ineligible to the Chamber;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would be ineligible! The perpetual subdivision
of estate compels every man to take care of himself from the age of
twenty.
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