After that he pleaded from time to time, earning a bare livelihood, without appearing to rise above average mediocrity.

At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy.

He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it.

On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile.

His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene the least regret for his irrelevant digression.