He said, with a contemptuous smile, “It is very annoying, Herr Referendarius, when a man can do nothing for himself; I will show you how to do it.”  I returned with him into the judge’s room.  The case was one in which the husband wanted a divorce and the wife not.  The husband accused her of adultery; the wife, tearful and declamatory, asserted her innocence; and, despite all manner of ill-treatment from the man, wanted to remain with him.  Praetorius, with his peculiar clicking lisp, thus addressed the woman:  “But, my good woman, don’t be so stupid.  What good will it do you?  When you get home, your husband will give you a jacketing until you can stand no more.  Come now, simply say ‘yes,’ and then you will be quit of the sot.”  To which the wife, crying hysterically, replied:  “I am an honest woman!  I will not have that indignity put upon me!  I don’t want to be divorced!” After manifold retorts and rejoinders in this tone, Praetorius turned to me with the words:  “As she will not listen to reason, write as follows, Herr Referendarius,” and dictated to me some words which, owing to the deep impression they made upon me, I remember to this day.  “Inasmuch as the attempt at reconciliation has been made, and arguments drawn from the sphere of religion and morality have proved fruitless, further proceedings were taken as follows.”  My chief then rose and said, “Now, you see how it is done, and in future leave me in peace about such things.”  I accompanied him to the door, and went on with the case.  The Divorce Court stage of my career lasted, so far as I can remember, from four to six weeks; a reconciliation case never came before me again.  There was a certain necessity for the ordinance respecting proceedings in divorce cases, to which Frederick William IV. was obliged to confine himself after his attempts to introduce a law for the substantial alteration of the Marriage Law had foundered upon the opposition of the Council of State.  With regard to this matter it may be mentioned that, as a result of this ordinance, the Attorney-General was first introduced into those provinces in which the old Prussian common law prevailed as defensor matrimonii, and to prevent collusion between the parties.

More inviting was the subsequent stage of petty cases, where the untrained young jurist at least acquired practice in listening to pleadings and examining witnesses, but where more use was made of him as a drudge than was met by the resulting benefit to his instruction.  The locality and the procedure partook somewhat of the restless bustle of a railway manager’s work.  The space in which the leading Rath and the three or four Auscultators sat with their backs to the public was surrounded by a wooden screen, and round about the four-cornered recess formed thereby surged an ever-changing and more or less noisy mob of parties to the suits.

My impression of institutions and persons was not essentially modified when I had been transferred to the Administration.  In order to abbreviate the detour to diplomacy, I applied to a Rhenish government, that of Aachen, where the course could be gone through in two years, whereas in the “old” provinces at least three years were required.[29]