and one of the windows is protected by a grille of wroughtiron of curious workmanship. On the peeling walls are pasted notices, the one against flies, that proclaiming the subsidy of calves and pigs at the market, some prohibitions to shoot over certain farms, a demand for a tender to carry the mails to a distant village, one or two notices of property sales: the every-day interest of the community.

The passage in the mairie is dark, and leads to the State school for girls, the innocent sounds from which occasionally can be heard through the court-room floor. Somewhere here, too, is stowed a fireengine, and the village big drum, which the atheist cobbler has silenced. A broad flight of stairs leads to a landing on the first floor, from which opens out the mairie's council-chamber and the court

room.

The council-chamber has a

large, green, baize-covered table, at which the councillors of the village seat themselves solemnly, and do their simple best to retard progress. Here one can find Raymond asleep, his bulging forehead couched upon a pile of municipal literature, snoring away his 2000 francs per annum. The chamber of justice is small and whitewashed. A railing divides it in two, on the far side of which is the juge's table, also green covered, raised on a dais. To his left, a lower table serves

by its side a couple of chairs seat the greffier and a barrister, who here pleads without robes or bands. Nor does the juge himself mount signs of office: he sits rather plumply rubicund, half-bored, half-sardonic, with a large wen just appearing where his hair is thinning off. There are chairs, half a dozen or so, at the disposal of an audience, but usually there is no audience. The litigants gather on the landing of the mairie, and creep in bashfully as their names are called by the greffier

Le Sieur Anselm Chose contre Madame Paulette Machin,” &c.

The litigants are of several varieties. There is the chronic plaintiff, usually a woman; there is the chronic defendant, usually a man. Both are egoists-the first too conscious of her neighbour's vices, the second too unconscious of his neighbour's rights. A type of the first was remarkable enough to be worthy of notice. She was an ex-nun, who had left her convent to marry, but who has remained a devotional bigot. She was a lank lean woman, with a pallid face ridged like plough-land, two black pearls of eyes, and the voice of a hoarse man. She crossed herself whenever she passed the Hotel Sestrol, because Raymond had said in jest that he and his family were atheists; but no Christian charity disturbed her conscience. She snapped into law at the slightest

Both types of litigants are well known to the Juge de Paix; he greets them with a rough grunt, something like that of a hoarse pig

"Hugh, hugh! Qu'es'que vous ronge cette fois ci."

There is the litigant who talks as though there can be no question on the other side, and the litigant who hardly dares to state his own case; there is the amicable litigant who can be seen drinking with his opponent before entering the mairie, and who has another drink with him to toast the decision whichever way it may be; there is the sly litigant who tries clownishly to hide essential facts, but who is almost invariably brought to book with acid comments by Monsieur le Juge; there is the hysterical witness, the silent witness, the loquacious. To all the juge is a sort of legal Father O'Flynn, sometimes forced to translate his decisions into mouthed patois when his suitors cannot understand the French. But often the litigants who do know French are unable to understand the legal form of the juge's summing up, and when the case is concluded stand silent, perplexed and gaping at the bar until the greffier chases them on to the landing, where they still hang about wondering hono things actually have been decided between them.

to the tribunal at Francheville. Sometimes, however, the juge is an echo of the Francheville court. For instance, in a case of assault, the victim pleads for damages in the village after the aggressor has been punished officially in the town. Thus the aggressor pays double law expenses.

Here is a typical morning's work for the Juge de Paix. He begins with a few cases of police work-riding bicycles without lamps, &c. These are polished off rapidly, in some cases only a fine of a franc being imposed, but expenses bring it up to fifteen or twenty francs, so the culprit doesn't get off as easily as it appears on the surface. Then the village placier brings in a man who refused to pay rent for the pavement he occupies. The French merchant, as is well known, spreads part of his shop outside upon the street ; the commune has decided that all merchants shall pay for this privilege, fifty centimes per metre per day, or a commutation for a year Sestrol pays thirty francs per annum for some six metres. But an old hard-shell villager objects. He has used his pavement for so many years without cost, new-fangled ideas rouse his gall. The juge rules that a commune can make its own laws; the old conservative is waved away still protesting.

The greffier gabbles a paper to the extent that le Sieur Bossot objects to a duckpond which is unhealthy and a nuisance, constructed by le Sieur Gaudet, the said duckpond being constructed by blocking up the public gutter between the houses of the said Sieurs Bossot and Gaudet. (Madame Sestrol has done the same over against the grille just beyond Potato's bottling shed.)

Monsieur Bossot speaks in an injured voice, “ca pue he repeats with growing emphasis; Monsieur Gaudet contradicts him, and is told to wait his turn. Monsieur Gaudet, his turn come, claims custom, "his grandfather before him," The juge says custom cannot cover insanitary nuisances, and refers the case to an arbiter. Let them choose somebody from their own hamlet, somebody with position. He suggests a few names. Les Sieurs Bossot and Gaudet are not satisfied. Those of whom Bossot approves are repudiated by Gaudet, and vice versa.

"Well, it will cost you more," says the juge. "I am here to "I am here to save you money if I can, but if you won't have it, tant pis." And he appoints a surveyor from Francheville.

Most local questions of this nature, such as rights-of-way,

ants know this, yet such is their love of legal squabble that they persist in the expense of coming before the Juge de Paix for such matters.

The next claimant is of the cunning type. He wants to have an order that his opponent shall move his straw-stack to another part of the local commonland. It now blocks a gate of the claimant's; opponent has refused to move, so claimant has been forced to law. But the defendant proves that the position of his stack counts back for several generations, that the gate was only newly made last winter.

This rouses the juge to piglike noises.

"Hugh, hugh," he cries, wagging a finger at the claimant, "you want to trick me into upsetting old customs, do you. You know perfectly well that I'll do no such thing."

Then comes one of the habitual belligerents, whom the juge greets with

against two cousins, a lean, dark, eagle-nosed man, and a peaky, anxious-looking woman with large pendulous red hands. She explains acidly that they have been cutting branches from trees on her land.

"Eh bien ? asks the juge, cocking his head at the couple. The man gesticulates his defence, his wife stands on tiptoe with anxiety. They have a right-of-way for animal traffic; the pugnacious old womanalways at loggerheads with her neighbours and with relations more than with any has planted trees so that now they have grown up they spread across this right-of-way. The man has merely cleared a passage for a laden donkey with panniers, his right. This planting of the trees is recent, malicious.

Arbitration," says the juge; then to the married couple,

"Madame Veuve Angeline Paturel née Belot articulez vos griefs," says the Juge de Paix.

Madame Paturel has sold her property to Madame Sorbet. She has sold it under an annuity agreement common enough in the district, where hard money counts for so much; that Madame Sorbet shall provide her during her lifetime with the necessities of life in kind, so many pots of goose grease for the kitchen, so much firewood for the winter, so much provender for a horse, so many sacks of wheat for bread, &c.

Madame Paturel glares vindictively at Madame Sorbet, and waves her pièce de conviction.

Madame Sorbet, with calmly folded arms and a prim expression, undisturbed by the demonstration, answers that the pot was good when it was given to Madame Paturel.

"Oho! and when was it given?" asks the juge, turning to Madame Veuve Paturel.

She begins to talk volubly, incoherently.

"Last January," says Madame Sorbet with cold triumph. "And did you examine it at the time," asks the juge.

"Bad grease is bad grease, Monsieur le Juge," snaps Madame Paturel ; nothing will alter that."

.

She turns furiously on Madame Sorbet, who, at last losing her enforced calm, retorts with energy. The two women quarrel loudly in the courtroom. They are urged outside the door, where they stay quarrelling on the landing. The next case cannot be begun. At last, still vociferating, they are thrust downstairs, out into the street; their voices die away into the distance.

The two final cases are referred back to their hamlets for arbitration, one that of a gate illegally locked across a right-of-way, the second a case of cutting back the branches of a wild cherry-tree which, standing in the plaintiff's ground, and therefore his property, was overshadowing a part of the defendant's garden.

A hush follows the last case.
"The next," says the juge.
"That is all," replies the

greffier.

Hugh,' answers the Juge de Paix, and stretches his arms. We, his only audience, get up from our corner-where, to his puzzlement, we quietly seat ourselves each fortnight, give him a non-committal bow, and steal softly on our string-soled shoes down the stairs, out into the streets, to the Hotel Sestrol. Here some of the adversaries are now toasting each other in pinard, in red wine of the country, or are already enjoying a mid-day meal of Madame Sestrol's cooking.