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with cold intensity.
    Andrew said to Cassirer, “I haven’t read the French authors who are your passion.”
    â€œI have read your sister’s novels.”
    â€œI will tell her.”
    â€œThey are quite good of their kind. You can tell her I said so.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œI have not read your stories.”
    â€œI will lend you copies.”
    Cassirer shook his head. “I really don’t care for fiction.”
    Then what in God’s name did he do in his course on Victorian novelists? Unfortunately, Andrew already knew, from Mabel. Dickens was a pamphleteer, George Eliot repressed, Trollope a wordy
joke. Students had wept in Anne Gogarty’s office when they told the chair of Cassirer’s comments on their enthusiasm for the novels assigned.
    â€œWe have to stop him now,” she said to Andrew. “It’s providential that he has offered us an early chance to cut him down.”
    â€œBut he will still have his job.”
    â€œFor another year.”
    Their tête-à-tête confirmed Cassirer in his surmise that Andrew would not vote for him. He went to Arachne, the dean, and to Holder, the provost, and said the committee was incompetent to judge his work. He demanded an outside review. He was told he would have that in any case. He meant a committee made up of someone other than his colleagues. Holder called in Anne Gogarty and asked if there was any chance that insufferable young man would be voted tenure. She told him how matters stood.
    â€œI will exercise my veto if he slips through.”
    â€œThat shouldn’t be necessary.”
    â€œI almost wish it were.”
    But Cassirer’s animus was directed at Andrew. He found the issues of the defunct journals in which Andrew had published and analyzed his stories in class, as Mabel reported. (“I do hate him now.” Dear girl. She would trouble no one’s concupiscence, but she was brilliant.) Cassirer had hired a lawyer named Tuttle to represent him, and the little man in a tweed hat came to Andrew’s office. He seem unfazed by the aromatic Foster.
    â€œNice room. Very homey.”
    â€œCassirer hired you? What for?”
    Tuttle fluttered a faculty manual. “To make sure correct procedures are followed. The days of academic confidentiality are over. There is the freedom of information act. There will be no secrets, no star chamber, justice will prevail.”
    Tuttle took some chips from the open bag on Foster’s desk:
Here was another sign of the times. Now disgruntled faculty regularly sued their institutions, often with success. But that took time.
    â€œSo what can I do for you?”
    â€œResign from the committee. You are prejudiced against my client.”
    â€œHow can you possibly know that?”
    The little lawyer pushed back his tweed hat and winked. “I told you there are no secrets.”
    â€œI suppose I could countersue for libel.”
    â€œAre you asking my professional advice?”
    â€œWould you give it?”
    â€œNot in the present circumstances. But if circumstances changed, let’s just say you’d have a strong case. Is Fulvio Bernardo your father?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWonderful man. I was sorry to hear about his illness.”
    Tuttle seemed genuinely sorry and Andrew warmed to the man. “He’s a little better.”
    â€œThank God for that. A man only has one father, you know.”
    â€œYou really ought to tell Cassirer to let matters take their course.”
    â€œNow you’re advising me.”
    â€œNo charge.”
    Tuttle laughed. He did not seem a formidable opponent, if that is what he was. “I am anxious to get into academic law, it’s a growing field.”
    â€œI’ll keep you in mind.”
    Tuttle took off his hat and fished a card from it and put it on Andrew’s desk. “You might let your colleagues know. Why do you have that machine running?”
    â€œIt