human
Of course, Esther, he said,
gpt
I don't know who does, he returned.
human
The lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a Will, and the trusts under a Will--or it was, once. It's about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about Costs. That's the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.
gpt
But it was, sir, said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his head,
human
Why, yes, it was about a Will when it was about any thing, he returned.
gpt
A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and made a great Will. In the question how the trusts under that Will are to be administered, the fortune left by the Will is squandered away: the legatees under the Will are reduced to such a miserable condition that they would be sufficiently punished, if they had committed an enormous crime in having money left them; and the Will itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause, every thing that every body in it, except one man, knows already, is referred to that only one man who don't know it, to find out--all through the deplorable cause, every body must have copies, over and over again, of every thing that has accumulated about it in the way of cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which is the usual course, for nobody wants them); and must go down the middle and up again, through such an infernal country-dance of costs, and fees, and nonsense, and corruption, as was never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a Witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to Law, Law sends questions back to Equity; Law finds it can't do this, Equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't do any thing, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the Apple Pie. And thus, through years and years, and lives and lives, every thing goes on, constantly beginning over and over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and _must be_ parties to it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When my great-uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning of the end!
human
The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?
gpt
I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther. When I came here, it was bleak, indeed. He had left the signs of his misery upon it.
human
How changed it must be now!
gpt
It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the mean time, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me have been blown out of the house too; it was so shattered and ruined.