It was a judiciously
flattering dispatch. It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to
undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly
accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a
pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs--the largest sum which a
parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could
scrape together. If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive
by the nest day's boat. There was a chance, thought the PARROCO, of his
doing so. Don Giustino was an ardent Catholic; he might be favourably
impressed by the modest petition of a clergyman in his constituency. He
had promised over and over again to visit his Nepenthean constituents.
He would now be killing two birds with one stone.
Five minutes, under ordinary circumstances, were wont to elapse ere an
item of private news could percolate out of the post office and become
public property. Such was the portentous import of this message that it
did not percolate at all.
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