I intend to prove this in a few words if the honourable
committee will kindly listen."
"Proceed," said the chairman.
"Please do ... Please ..." was heard from the barristers, now
animated.
"I offer you my sincere thanks in the name of all my comrades. Believe
me, you will never repent your attention to the representatives of our
... well, let us say, slippery, but nevertheless difficult,
profession. 'So we begin,' as Giraldoni sings in the prologue to
_Pagliacci_.
"But first I would ask your permission, Mr. Chairman, to quench my
thirst a little... Porter, bring me a lemonade and a glass of English
bitter, there's a good fellow. Gentlemen, I will not speak of the
moral aspect of our profession nor of its social importance. Doubtless
you know better than I the striking and brilliant paradox of Proudhon:
_La propriete c'est le vol_--a paradox if you like, but one that has
never yet been refuted by the sermons of cowardly bourgeois or fat
priests. For instance: a father accumulates a million by energetic and
clever exploitation, and leaves it to his son--a rickety, lazy,
ignorant, degenerate idiot, a brainless maggot, a true parasite.
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