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When I told the solicitor I had no money to face the gigantic expense, you interposed at once. You said that your own family would be only too delighted to pay all the necessary costs: that your father had been an incubus to them all : that they had often discussed the possibility of getting him put into a lunatic asylum so as to keep him out of the way: that he was a daily source of annoyance and distress to your mother and to everyone else: that if I would only come forward to have him shut up I would be regarded by the family as their champion and their benefactor: and that your mother’s rich relations themselves would look on it as a real delight to be allowed to pay all costs and expenses that might be incurred in any such effort. The solicitor closed at once, and I was hurried to the Police Court. I had no excuse left for not going. I was forced into it. Of course your family don’t pay the costs, and, when I am made bankrupt, it is by your father, and for the costs — the meagre balance of them — some ￡700. At the present moment my wife, estranged from me over the important question of whether I should have ￡3 or ￡3. 10 a week to live on, is preparing a divorce suit, for which, of course, entirely new evidence and an entirely new trial, to be followed perhaps by more serious proceedings, will be necessary. I, naturally, know nothing of the details. I merely know the name of the witness on whose evidence my wife’s solicitors rely. It is your own Oxford servant, whom at your special request I took into my service for our summer at Goring.
当我告诉律师我没钱支付这巨额费用时，你马上提出，说你自己家里将很乐意支付所有的费用，说你父亲是你们大家的祸害，你们常常商量是不是把他送疯人院了事，说你父亲成天弄得你母亲还有别的人不得安生，如果我能为你们出头，让他就范，那全家人就会把我当作英雄和恩人，而你母亲有钱的亲戚朋友会因为允许他们代为偿付此举的一切费用而满心欢喜。 律师当即拍板，我就被催着去了治安法庭。你这么一说我就没有理由不去了。我被迫卷了进去。当然，你家并未支付那些费用，我是被你父亲，为那些费用，弄得破了产——为了区区的700英镑。我妻子，因为我每周生活费应该是3英镑还是3英镑10先令这一重大问题而同我反目，目前正准备提出离婚。这一来，当然又得是完全另一套的证据，另一场的审判，接着可能是更为严重的官司。其中细节我自然是不得而知，只知道证人的名字，我妻子的律师所倚重的就是他的证词。他就是你本人在牛津的仆人，因你特别请求，我们在戈灵度夏时雇用了他。
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