Love this triologism, ink-licking, you can imagine smudgy blue fingertips and grubby blots on his cuffs.

The speaker may be more than an ink-licking notary, but he is core-corrupt and keeps the locals in his thrall. His animadversions regarding the ‘little aristocrat’ stem from the aristocrat actually trying to clean up the graft.

‘With all these questions he was trying to show this little aristocrat who played at politics that he too, Gaszton Simo, was no simple ink-licking notary from the backwoods but an informed man-of-the-world who deserved proper consideration.’

For another lawyerly triologism, meet the attorney.

Source: Miklos Banffy, They Were Counted, trans. Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-Jelen (London: Arcadia Books, 1999 (1934)), p. 183