Will-making and will-breaking became complementary trades, like armor-making and gun-making.

The shrewdest will-making lawyers were called in to make wills that could not be broken.

But these wills were always broken, and very often by the very lawyers that had drawn them up.

Nevertheless the delusion persisted in the wealthy class that an absolutely unbreakable will could be cast; and so, through the generations, clients and lawyers pursued the illusion.

It was a pursuit like unto that of the Universal Solvent of the mediaeval alchemists.
He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried an undertone of faint irony, to introduce Ernest.