deed was committed; he had the watch of his victim upon him when arrested.
Nothing could be clearer; but was Lebrun an accomplice of Berry? He (Berry), unable to deny his participation in the crime, tried to throw the blame upon the valet-de-chambre; but on the day of his execution he freed his conscience. In the presence of M. le Nain and of his counsel Gilbert, he made a full confession, in which he acknowledged that he alone was the author of the crime. His object had been robbery, and he succeeded in obtaining some six thousand livres, which Madame Mazel had in a purse. He had not intended to kill Madame Mazel, but was forced to do so on her attempting to call for aid.
He said nothing of any complicity on the part of the family, or of the persons it was believed were concerned in the affair. He carefully avoided any allusion to them.
In 1694 a decree of Parliament rehabilitated the memory of Lebrun, and, in spite of the efforts of the advocate for the De Savonnières, confirmed the legacy of six thousand livres.
The Savonnières and the administrators of the laws of those times are objects of disgust and shame to modern generations; the poor valet unjustly condemned, the poor widow whose husband's life was actually bargained away, have had added to their denouncing voices the voices of all those of later times, who have unhesitatingly condemned the infamous regime under which such travesties upon justice were possible.
THE CHARACTER OF A SOLICITOR IN 1675.
THE following extract from a pamphlet, dated 1675, illustrates the reputation in which solicitors as contrasted with attorneys were then held:—
A solicitor is a pettifogging sophister, one whom by the same figure that a North Country peddler is a merchant man, you may style a lawyer. List him an attorney, and you smother Tom Thumb in a pudding. The very name of scrivener outreaches him, and he is swallowed up in the praise, like Sir Hudibras in a great saddle. Nothing to be seen but the giddy feathers in his crown. Some say he's a gentleman, but he becomes the epithet as a swine's snout does a carbuncle; he is just such another dunghill rampant. The silly countryman (who seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, best (sic) his young worship and gave his lordship joy) did not slander his complement with worse application than he that names him a law giver. The cook that served up a rope in a pye (to continue the frolick) might have wrapped up such a pettifogger as this in his bill of fare. He is will-with-a-wisp, a wit whither thou woo't. Proteus has not more shapes than he can perform offices. He can instruct with the counsellors, plead as an attorney; he has all the tricks and quillets of an informer, nay, and a bum too, for a need—in a word, he is a Jack-of-all-trades, and his shattered brain, like a crackt looking glass, represents a thousand fancies. He calls himself Esquire of the Quill, but to see how he tugs at his pen, and belaboureth his half-amazed clyents with a cudgel of cramp words, it would make a dog break his halter. The jugling Skip Jack being lately put to his last shift, has metamorphosed a needle into a goose feather, and the sole of an old shoe into a sheet of paper, for the best of his profession have been forlorn taylors, outcast brokers, drunken coblers, or the offspring of such a rabble rout. He hugs the papers as the devil hugg'd the witch, for they are an advancement of his science, these frisk about him like a swarm of bees, yet he is a man of vast practice if he has but half a score of 'em. If his lowsie clyents chance to recover an old rotten barn or a weather-beaten cottage, he will be sure to have two-third parts for a quantum meruit. He is Lord Paramount among the shifting bailiffs, and a sworn brother to the marshall men, and is behind none of them at the extortive
