'Three hours! heavens! Von Bauhr is, I think, from Berlin.'
'Yes; he and Dr. Slotacher. Slotacher is to read his paper the day after to-morrow.'
'Then I think I shall go to London again. But what did Von Bauhr say to you during those three hours?'
'Of course it was all in German, and I don't suppose that any one understood him,—unless it was Boanerges. But I believe it was the old story, going to show that the same man might be judge, advocate, and jury.'
'No doubt;—if men were machines, and if you could find such machines perfect at all points in their machinery.'
'And if the machines had no hearts?'
'Machines don't have hearts,' said Mr. Furnival; 'especially those in Germany. And what did Boanerges say? His answer did not take three hours more, I hope.'
'About twenty minutes; but what he did say was lost on Von Bauhr, who understands as much English as I do German. He said that the practice of the Prussian courts had always been to him a subject of intense interest, and that the general justice of their verdicts could not be impugned.'
'Nor ought it, seeing that a single trial for murder will occupy a court for three weeks. He should have asked Von Bauhr how much work he usually got through in the course of a sessions. I don't seem to have lost much by being away. By-the-by, do you happen to know whether Round is here?'
'What, old Round? I saw him in the hall to-day yawning as though he would burst.' And then Mr. Furnival strolled off to look for the attorney among the various purlieus frequented by the learned strangers.
'Furnival,' said another barrister, accosting him—an elderly man, small, with sharp eyes and bushy eyebrows, dirty in his attire and poor in his general appearance, 'have you seen Judge Staveley?' This was Mr. Chaffanbrass, great at the Old Bailey, a man well able to hold his own in spite of the meanness of his appearance. At such a meeting as this the English bar generally could have had no better representative than Mr. Chaffanbrass.
'No; is he here?'
'He must be here. He is the only man they could find who knows enough Italian to understand what that fat fellow from Florence will say to-morrow.'
'We're to have the Italian to-morrow, are we?'
'Yes; and Staveley afterwards. It's as good as a play; only, like all plays, it's three times too long. I wonder whether anybody here believes in it?'
'Yes, Felix Graham does.'
'He believes everything—unless it is the Bible. He is one of
