the mercy of her master, the mother following
the French army through the Italian campaign.
The mother might never return. She had
committed an error in removing her child, however,
and she was willing to give her child back to
dapper manufacturer if he would accept half the
sum he demanded.

The president then appealed to the
exquisite, who was sucking the end of his cane.
Would he forego his indemnity? For the
amount he claimed was excessive. The woman
owned that she had been in the wrong, and
now sought to do all that was in her power to
repair her fault.

The dapper complainant would have all he
had asked or nothing.

Thereupon the Prudent Men swarmed once
more about the president's chair, and hummed
for some five minutes. There was evidently a
difference of opinion, and the flower-maker
glanced confidently round the court, now at the
secretary (who was using a toothpick and reading
the Moniteur), now at the defendants.
The humming presently ceased, and the
president, addressing the complainant, told him
that the council, having anxiously deliberated,
and having taken into consideration the
interests of the child, could not allow the
indemnity complainant sought, since he had
incurred no loss whatever from the mother's
fault. The court, moreover, annulled the
apprenticeship.

A workwoman now tripped into the
complainant's place, while a lady in the most
bouffante of crinolines, and dazzlingly dressed,
followed to the position of defendant. This was
a case of hard swearing. The poor workwoman
had done work for the defendant, who kept a
milliner's establishment, and could not obtain
her wages, viz. twenty francs. The lady, in a
shrill, harsh voice, declared that she had paid
the workwoman the full value of her labour.
But ugly facts turned up. It was proved that the
shrill lady had since acknowledged the debt, and
had promised week after week to pay it. It was
clear that the lady had not adhered rigidly to the
truth, and that she was endeavouring to defraud
a poor woman of her wages. Yet it was difficult
to determine the value of the woman's work
The Prudent Men here displayed their peculiar
value. They asked the workwoman what she
had done for the defendant. The woman
described various mysterious items of feminine
under-clothing amid the laughter of the court.
This was enough. The Prudent Men
deliberated, masters and men, and fixed the fair price.
Then there was the hard swearing on both sides,
out of which neither complainant nor defendant
came quite clean. But defendant was the
intrepid swearer, and had torn her books in
suspicious places. She was told by the president
that he could hardly trust himself to express his
opinion and that of the court on her want of
self-respect. The court ordered her to pay ten
francs to the workwoman. The elegant milliner
tossed her head and whisked her crinoline, and
endeavoured in various feminine ways to convey
to the Prudent Men her contempt for them and
their proceedings. But the president called
the next case, without deigning to notice either
the toss of the head or the whisking of the
crinoline.

Here was a quarrel between a hairdresser and
his man. The heads of complainant and defendant
stood in open rivalry before the Prudent
Men, models in their way, of the coiffeur's art.
The complainant narrated his grievance against
his late master. He had been engaged to dress
hair, and had been regarded with especial
favour by his master, having brought a
distinguished customer with him (whose hair he
had had the honour of dressing for years)
from the Chaussée d'Antin. The distinguished
customer had, however, run up a bill, and was
now taken in execution. The master hairdresser
declared now, that his man dressed the
distinguished lady's hair on his own account; or rather
that she was to be a customer of the shop, if she
paid, and of the poor journeyman, if she did not
pay.

"Rather an elastic way of doing business,"
said the president.

The journeyman's complaint was, that his
master had discharged him, and held his few
clothes as security for the distinguished
customer's unpaid bill.

The Prudent Men ordered the master to
give up the journeyman's effects, to pay him
his wages in full. Moreover, they treated
the master to some wholesome advice on the
proper conduct of an employer towards his
servant.

Other cases followed. One in which justice
was admirably administered between a slop-
seller and a poor needlewoman, and another,
in which a man claimed a week's wages. It
appeared that the man had left his work for
two days, that he might indulge in Barrière
amusements. Another workman had therefore
been put in his place. The president
indignantly dismissed the case, saying no man
of honour claimed wages who had not done
work. Master and man were presently heard
quarrelling on the staircase. We followed them,
anxious to hear the termination of the
dispute. Two policemen were at the elbows of
the disputants in a minute. But the master,
very kindly, asked the police not to take
notice of the angry idler. They wrangled
along the Rue de la Douane, till they were
lost in the crowds of the Boulevard Bonne
Nouvelle.

Let us here note, in closing our morning
with the Prudent Men—a morning that has
suggested to us many useful rules and laws
for home use—that out of the 8793 quarrels
referred in 1857 from the private conciliation
courts to the public general courts, 6193 were
withdrawn before judgment had been
pronounced; that 2076 cases went to judgment;
that there were threats of appeal in 526 cases;
and that only 54 appeals to the superior courts
were actually made.

What misery, bad feeling, and injustice might