But that was
neither here nor there in the estimation of the habitans, so long
as his law smelt strong in the nostrils of their opponents in
litigation. They rather prided themselves upon the roughness of
their travelling notary.
The reputation of Master Pothier dit Robin was, of course, very
great among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and
from seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations,
marriage contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry,
who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a
respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and
sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the
actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate
intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would
puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the
sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of
embryo disputes as a fig is full of seeds, and usually kept all
parties in hot water and litigation for the rest of their days.
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