Der Praefekt

who received him that the great man would
    be with him immediately.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter XVII
     
    SIR ABRAHAM HAPHAZARD
     
     
    Mr Harding was shown into a comfortable inner sitting-room, looking
    more like a gentleman’s book-room than a lawyer’s chambers, and there
    waited for Sir Abraham.  Nor was he kept waiting long: in ten or
    fifteen minutes he heard a clatter of voices speaking quickly in the
    passage, and then the attorney-general entered.
     
    “Very sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Warden,” said Sir Abraham, shaking
    hands with him; “and sorry, too, to name so disagreeable an hour;
    but your notice was short, and as you said to-day, I named the very
    earliest hour that was not disposed of.”
     
    Mr Harding assured him that he was aware that it was he that should
    apologise.
     
    Sir Abraham was a tall thin man, with hair prematurely gray, but
    bearing no other sign of age; he had a slight stoop, in his neck
    rather than his back, acquired by his constant habit of leaning
    forward as he addressed his various audiences.  He might be fifty
    years old, and would have looked young for his age, had not constant
    work hardened his features, and given him the appearance of a machine
    with a mind.  His face was full of intellect, but devoid of natural
    Ausdruck. You would say he was a man to use, and then have done
    with; a man to be sought for on great emergencies, but ill-adapted for
    ordinary services; a man whom you would ask to defend your property,
    but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love.  He was bright
    as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable.  He knew
    everyone whom to know was an honour, but he was without a friend; he
    wanted none, however, and knew not the meaning of the word in other
    than its parliamentary sense.  A friend!  Had he not always been
    sufficient to himself, and now, at fifty, was it likely that he should
    trust another?  He was married, indeed, and had children, but what
    time had he for the soft idleness of conjugal felicity?  His working
    days or term times were occupied from his time of rising to the late
    hour at which he went to rest, and even his vacations were more full
    of labour than the busiest days of other men.  He never quarrelled
    with his wife, but he never talked to her;—he never had time to talk,
    he was so taken up with speaking.  She, poor lady, was not unhappy;
    she had all that money could give her, she would probably live to be
    a peeress, and she really thought Sir Abraham the best of husbands.
     
    Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest at
    the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he always sparkled;
    whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the courts of law,
    coruscations flew from him; glittering sparkles, as from hot steel,
    but no heat; no cold heart was ever cheered by warmth from him, no
    unhappy soul ever dropped a portion of its burden at his door.
     
    With him success alone was praiseworthy, and he knew none so
    successful as himself.  No one had thrust him forward; no powerful
    friends had pushed him along on his road to power.  No; he was
    attorney-general, and would, in all human probability, be lord
    chancellor by sheer dint of his own industry and his own talent. Welche
    else in all the world rose so high with so little help?  A premier,
    in der Tat! Who had ever been premier without mighty friends? Ein
    archbishop!  Yes, the son or grandson of a great noble, or else,
    probably, his tutor.  But he, Sir Abraham, had had no mighty lord
    at his back; his father had been a country apothecary, his mother a
    farmer’s daughter.  Why should he respect any but himself?  And so he
    glitters along through the world, the brightest among the bright; and
    when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his fathers, no eye
    will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for its lost friend.
     
    “And so, Mr Warden,” said Sir Abraham, “all our trouble about this
    lawsuit is at an end.”
     
    Mr Harding said he hoped so, but he didn’t at all understand what Sir
    Abraham meant.  Sir Abraham, with all his sharpness, could not have
    looked into his heart and read his intentions.
     
    “All over.  You need trouble yourself no further about it; of course
    they must pay the costs, and the absolute expense to you and Dr
    Grantly will be trifling,—that is, compared with what it might have
    been if it had been continued.”
     
    “I fear I don’t quite