Hors-d'Œuvre
On a professional privilege

Some extravagant minds wonder by virtue of what human right men, encroaching on divine prerogatives, allow themselves to judge and punish their fellow men. But there is a privilege more astonishing than that of the man who condemns; it is that of the man who defends and who, in the attack, surpasses and defies justice with impunity.

I had already had the opportunity to see in a courtroom two lawyers pitted against each other. I had already had the opportunity to see, in the days of hackney carriages, two coachmen standing on their seats and exchanging lashes after having exhausted an almost inexhaustible repertoire of invectives.
And I had noticed that, in both cases, the lashes fell on the clients.

But, having entered (by invitation) a courtroom while I was travelling on the Western Road, I had the good fortune to make an observation of a legal nature and much more interesting.
Mr. Pickwick, grandfather of La Brige, was on trial (La Brige has English blood, for it is never a pure-blooded Frenchman who would mutiny against the august caprices of the administration and the venerable iniquities of justice.)
Mr. Pickwick, as you know, has already been condemned at the request of Mrs. Bardwell. This time he was prosecuted by the Bishop of Oxford.

As Mr. Pickwick rode along in the post-chaise, his servant, Sam Weller, perched on the seat, had unwittingly sung the third verse of his favorite song: Turpin and the Bishop, a song which is found throughout the Pickwicks Papers and which, in English folklore, corresponds to the French hymn dedicated to Bishop Dupanloup:

Turpin stuck his head into the coach And said "God damn me, indeed, If this bishop is not drunk!"
And Mr. Pickwick, made very jovial by the absorption of a certain quantity of cold grog, took up the refrain in chorus:
Ahoy! Turpin! Ahoy!
The Bishop of Oxford, offended in his dignity and in his episcopal honour by these songs which tradition nevertheless made almost liturgical, pursued Mr. Pickwick before a justice which was not his own and asked the secular courts for compensation for an injury which had been caused to him on the highways.

The bishop's lawyer was a tall and thin personage, with a sad and mean eye, and whose hooked profile, completed by the wrapping of the black robe, would have perfectly evoked the image of a raven if a flow of astonishing volubility had not substituted for the image of the raven that of a parrot in the minds of the listeners.

To the great indignation of Mr. Pickwick, he began his speech thus:
The individual who appears before you for an odious assault on the most venerable of prelates claims to be called Pickwick... But who proves to me that his name is really Pickwick? There are people who boast of being called Pickwick and who are really called Jeannot... Why should the accused not be called Jeannot?

Having, by this hypothesis, plunged the minds of the judges into an abyss of perplexity, the bishop's lawyer continued: - I saw, at a bookseller's, a book signed "Pickwick" and entitled: "Theory on the tadpoles of the ponds of Hampstead", followed by a study on the evolution of frogs. The cover announced the 27th thousand, while the illustrious work of His Grace the Bishop of Oxford on the Dialectic of Thomas Moore only tempted thirty-five amateurs. Who proves to me, therefore, that the publisher of the named Pickwick is not a liar and consequently a crook?... I respect myself too much to have bought the work of the named Pickwick. So, not having read it, I can safely assume that it is an infamous, obscene book, offensive to good morals and patriotism.
Then entering into the heart of the debate, the lawyer revealed that the refrain sung on the road by Mr. Pickwick was the result of a plot; for, ten years before, on the same road, it had already been sung by a carter, certainly paid by Mr. Pickwick. Then he affirmed that Mr. Pickwick was an abominable being who, to earn a few pennies, did not hesitate to appeal, on the public roads, to the most bestial passions of the vilest multitude.
I listened to the lawyer of Monseigneur, and I said to myself:

"Here at last is some good and beautiful defamation. This lawyer will certainly be condemned by the court for having produced, without the slightest proof, without the slightest pretext and in insulting terms, the most damaging insinuations for the honor of an inoffensive citizen, with the obvious intention of harming him. Such are, in fact, the characteristics of defamation, according to what the lawyer himself has just explained to us." But the court was not moved. It was explained to me that such was the privilege of the bar.

A lawyer has the right to commit, in court itself, gratuitous defamation that would cost a journalist dearly. Yet I am wrong to say that this defamation is gratuitous on the part of the lawyer, it is paid for.

This is very useful to know. When I want to sing Turpin and the Bishop on the Road to Oxford or Father Dupanloup on the Road to Orléans, I will start by putting on a black dress, a hat and a flap.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.