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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, by France
+#3 in our series by Anatole France
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+The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
+
+by Anatole France
+
+March, 2000  [Etext #2123]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, by France
+*******This file should be named tcosb10.txt or tcosb10.zip******
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+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, tcosb11.txt
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+This Etext prepared by Brett Fishburne (bfish@atlantech.net)
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+
+
+The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
+
+by Anatole France
+
+
+
+
+Part I--The Log
+
+
+
+
+December 24, 1849.
+
+
+I had put on my slippers and my dressing-gown.  I wiped away a tear
+with which the north wind blowing over the quay had obscured my
+vision.  A bright fire was leaping in the chimney of my study. 
+Ice-crystals, shaped like fern-leaves, were sprouting over the
+windowpanes and concealed from me the Seine with its bridges and
+the Louvre of the Valois.
+
+I drew up my easy-chair to the hearth, and my table-volante, and
+took up so much of my place by the fire as Hamilcar deigned to allow
+me.  Hamilcar was lying in front of the andirons, curled up on a
+cushion, with his nose between his paws.  His think find fur rose
+and fell with his regular breathing.  At my coming, he slowly slipped
+a glance of his agate eyes at me from between his half-opened lids,
+which he closed again almost at once, thinking to himself, "It is
+nothing; it is only my friend."
+
+"Hamilcar," I said to him, as I stretched my legs--"Hamilcar, somnolent
+Prince of the City of Books--thou guardian nocturnal!  Like that
+Divine Cat who combated the impious in Heliopolis--in the night of
+the great combat--thou dost defend from vile nibblers those books
+which the old savant acquired at the cost of his slender savings and
+indefatigable zeal.  Sleep, Hamilcar, softly as a sultana, in this
+library, that shelters thy military virtues;  for verily in thy person
+are united the formidable aspect of a Tatar warrior and the slumbrous
+grace of a woman of the Orient.  Sleep, thou heroic and voluptuous
+Hamilcar, while awaiting the moonlight hour in which the mice will
+come forth to dance before the Acta Sanctorum of the learned
+Bolandists!"
+
+The beginning of this discourse pleased Hamilcar, who accompanied
+it with a throat-sound like the song of a kettle on the fire.  But
+as my voice waxed louder, Hamilcar notified me by lowering his ears
+and by wrinkling the striped skin of his brow that it was bad taste
+on my part so to declaim.
+
+"This old-book man," evidently thought Hamilcar, "talks to no purpose
+at all while our housekeeper never utters a word which is not full
+of good sense, full of significance--containing either the announcement
+of a meal or the promise of a whipping.  One knows what she says.
+But this old man puts together a lot of sounds signifying nothing."
+
+So thought Hamilcar to himself.  Leaving him to his reflections, I
+opened a book, which I began to read with interest;  for it was a
+catalogue of manuscripts.  I do not know any reading more easy, more
+fascinating, more delightful than that of a catalogue.  The one
+which I was reading--edited in 1824 by Mr. Thompson, librarian to
+Sir Thomas Raleigh--sins, it is true, by excess of brevity, and
+does not offer that character of exactitude which the archivists
+of my own generation were the first to introduce into works upon
+diplomatics and paleography.  It leaves a good deal to be desired
+and to be divined.  This is perhaps why I find myself aware, while
+reading it, of a state of mind which in nature more imaginative than
+mine might be called reverie.  I had allowed myself to drift away
+this gently upon the current of my thoughts, when my housekeeper
+announced, in a tone of ill-humor, that Monsieur Coccoz desired
+to speak with me.
+
+In fact, some one had slipped into the library after her.  He was a
+little man--a poor little man of puny appearance, wearing a thin
+jacket.  He approached me with a number of little bows and smiles.
+But he was very pale, and, although still young and alert, he looked
+ill.  I thought as I looked at him, of a wounded squirrel.  He
+carried under his arm a green toilette, which he put upon a chair;
+then unfastening the four corners of the toilette, he uncovered
+a heap of little yellow books.
+
+"Monsieur," he then said to me, "I have not the honour to be known
+to you.  I am a book-agent, Monsieur.  I represent the leading
+houses of the capital, and in the hope that you will kindly honour
+me with your confidence, I take the liberty to offer you a few
+novelties."
+
+Kind gods! just gods! such novelties as the homunculus Coccoz showed
+me!  The first volume that he put in my hand was "L'Histoire de la
+Tour de Nesle,"  with the amours of Marguerite de Bourgogne and the
+Captain Buridan.
+
+"It is a historical book," he said to me, with a smile--"a book of
+real history."
+
+"In that case," I replied, "it must be very tiresome; for all the
+historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.  I
+write some authentic ones myself; and if you were unlucky enough to
+carry a copy of any of them from door to door you would run the risk
+of keeping it all your life in that green baize of yours, without ever
+finding even a cook foolish enough to buy it from you."
+
+"Certainly Monsieur," the little man answered, out of pure good-nature.
+
+And, all smiling again, he offered me the "Amours d'Heloise et d'Abeilard";
+but I made him understand that, at my age, I had no use for love-stories.
+
+Still smiling, he proposed me the "Regle des Jeux de la Societe"--
+piquet, bezique, ecarte, whist, dice, draughts, and chess.
+
+"Alas!"  I said to him, "if you want to make me remember the rules of
+bezique, give me back my old friend Bignan, with whom I used to play
+cards every evening before the Five Academies solemnly escorted him
+to the cemetery; or else bring down to the frivolous level of human
+amusements the grave intelligence of Hamilcar, whom you see on that
+cushion, for he is the sole companion of my evenings."
+
+The little man's smile became vague and uneasy.
+
+"Here," he said, "is a new collection of society amusements--jokes
+and puns--with a receipt for changing a red rose to a white rose."
+
+I told him that I had fallen out with the roses for a long time, and
+that, as to jokes, I was satisfied with those which I unconsciously
+permitted myself to make in the course of my scientific labours.
+
+The homunculus offered me his last book, with his last smile.  He
+said to me:
+
+"Here is the Clef des Songes--the 'Key of Dreams'--with the explanation
+of any dreams that anybody can have; dreams of gold, dreams of robbers,
+dreams of death, dreams of falling from the top of a tower....  It
+is exhaustive."
+
+I had taken hold of the tongs, and, brandishing them energetically, I
+replied to my commercial visitor:
+
+"Yes, my friend; but those dreams and a thousand others, joyous or
+tragic, are all summed up in one--the Dream of Life; is your little
+yellow book able to give me the key to that?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," answered the homunculus; "the book is complete, and
+it is not dear--one franc twenty-five centimes, Monsieur."
+
+I called my housekeeper--for there is no bell in my room--and said
+to her:
+
+"Therese, Monsieur Coccoz--whom I am going to ask you to show out--has
+a book here which might interest you:  the 'Key of Dreams.'  I shall
+be very glad to buy it for you."
+
+My housekeeper responded:
+
+"Monsieur, when one has not even time to dream awake, one has still
+less time to dream asleep.  Thank God, my days are just enough for my
+work and my work for my days, and I am able to say every night,
+'Lord, bless Thou the rest which I am going to take.'  I never dream,
+either on my feet or in bed; and I never mistake my eider-down coverlet
+for a devil, as my cousin did; and, if you will allow me to give my
+opinion about it, I think you have books enough here now.  Monsieur
+has thousands and thousands of books, which simply turn his head; and
+as for me, I have just tow, which are quite enough for all my wants
+and purposes--my Catholic prayer-book and my Cuisiniere Bourgeoise."
+
+And with those words my housekeeper helped the little man to fasten
+up his stock again within the green toilette.
+
+The homunculus Coccoz had ceased to smile.  His relaxed features took
+such an expression of suffering that I felt sorry to have made fun
+of so unhappy a man.  I called him back, and told him that I had
+caught a glimpse of a copy of the "Histoire d'Estelle et de Nemorin,"
+which he had among his books; that I was very fond of shepherds and
+shepherdesses, and that I would be quite willing to purchase, at a
+reasonable price, the story of these two perfect lovers.
+
+"I will sell you that book for one franc twenty-five centimes,
+Monsieur," replied Coccoz, whose face at once beamed with joy.  "It
+is historical; and you will be pleased with it.  I know now just
+what suits you.  I see that you are a connoisseur.  To-morrow I will
+bring you the Crimes des Papes.  It is a good book.  I will bring
+you the edition d'amateur, with coloured plates."
+
+I begged him not to do anything of the sort, and sent him away happy.
+When the green toilette and the agent had disappeared in the
+shadow of the corridor I asked my housekeeper whence this little
+man had dropped upon us.
+
+"Dropped is the word," she answered; "he dropped on us from the roof,
+Monsieur, where he lives with his wife."
+
+"You say he has a wife, Therese?  That is marvelous!  Women are
+very strange creatures!  This one must be a very unfortunate little
+woman."
+
+"I don't really know what she is," answered Therese; "but every
+morning I see her trailing a silk dress covered with grease-spots
+over the stairs.  She makes soft eyes at people.  And, in the name
+of common sense! does it become a woman that has been received here
+out of charity to make eyes and to wear dresses like that?  For
+they allowed the couple to occupy the attic during the time the roof
+was being repaired, in consideration of the fact that the husband
+is sick and the wife in an interesting condition.  The concierge even
+says that the pain came on her this morning, and that she is now
+confined.  They must have been very badly off for a child!"
+
+"Therese," I replied, "they had no need of a child, doubtless.  But
+Nature had decided that they should bring one into the world; Nature
+made them fall into her snare.  One must have exceptional prudence
+to defeat Nature's schemes.  Let us be sorry for them and not blame
+them!  As for silk dresses, there is no young woman who does not like
+them.  The daughters of Eve adore adornment.  You yourself, Therese--
+who are so serious and sensible--what a fuss you make when you have
+no white apron to wait at table in!  But, tell me, have they got
+everything necessary in their attic?"
+
+"How could they have it, Monsieur?"  my housekeeper made answer. 
+"The husband, whom you have just seen, used to be a jewellery-peddler--
+at least, so the concierge tells me--and nobody knows why he stopped
+selling watches.  you have just seen that his is now selling
+almanacs.  That is no way to make an honest living, and I never will
+believe that God's blessing can come to an almanac-peddler.  Between
+ourselves, the wife looks to me for all the world like a good-for-nothing--
+a Marie-couche toi-la.  I think she would be just as capable of
+bringing up a child as I should be of playing the guitar.  Nobody
+seems to know where they came from; but I am sure they must have come
+by Misery's coach from the country of Sans-souci."
+
+"Wherever they have come from, Therese, they are unfortunate; and
+their attic is cold."
+
+"Pardi!--the roof is broken in several places and the rain comes
+through in streams.  They have neither furniture nor clothing.  I
+don't think cabinet-makers and weavers work much for Christians of
+that sect!"
+
+"That is very sad, Therese; a Christian woman much less well provided
+for than this pagan, Hamilcar here!--what does she have to say?"
+
+"Monsieur, I never speak to those people; I don't know what she says
+or what she sings.  But she sings all day long; I hear her from the
+stairway whenever I am going out or coming in."
+
+"Well! the heir of the Coccoz family will be able to say, like the
+Egg in the village riddle: Ma mere me fit en chantant. ["My mother
+sang when she brought me into the world."]  The like happened in the
+case of Henry IV.  When Jeanne d'Albret felt herself about to be
+confined she began to sing an old Bearnaise canticle:
+
+ "Notre-Dame du bout du pont,
+  Venez a mon aide en cette heure!
+  Priez le Dieu du ciel
+  Qu'il me delivre vite,
+  Qu'il me donne un garcon!
+
+"It is certainly unreasonable to bring little unfortunates into the
+world.  But the thing is done every day, my dear Therese and all the
+philosophers on earth will never be able to reform the silly custom.
+Madame Coccoz has followed it, and she sings.  This is creditable at
+all events!  But, tell me, Therese, have you not put the soup to boil
+to-day?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; and it is time for me to go and skim it."
+
+"Good! but don't forget, Therese, to take a good bowl of soup out of
+the pot and carry it to Madame Coccoz, our attic neighbor."
+
+My housekeeper was on the point of leaving the room when I added,
+just in time:
+
+"Therese, before you do anything else, please call your friend the
+porter, and tell him to take a good bundle of wood out of our stock
+and carry it up to the attic of those Coccoz folks.  See, above all,
+that he puts a first-class log in the lot--a real Christmas log.  As
+for the homunculus, if he comes back again, do not allow either
+himself or any of his yellow books to come in here."
+
+Having taken all these little precautions with the refined egotism of
+an old bachelor, I returned to my catalogue again.
+
+With what surprise, with what emotion, with what anxiety did I therein
+discover the following mention, which I cannot even now copy without
+feeling my hand tremble:
+
+"LA LEGENDE DOREE DE JACQUES DE GENES (Jacques de Voragine);--
+traduction francaise, petit in-4.
+
+"This MS. of the fourteenth century contains, besides the tolerably
+complete translation of the celebrated work of Jacques de Voragine,
+1. The Legends of Saints Ferreol, Ferrution, Germain, Vincent, and
+Droctoveus; 2. A poem 'On the Miraculous Burial of Monsieur Saint-Germain
+of Auxerre.'  This translation, as well as the legends and the poem,
+are due to the Clerk Alexander.
+
+"This MS. is written upon vellum.  It contains a great number of
+illuminated letters, and two finely executed miniatures, in a rather
+imperfect state of preservation:--one represents the Purification of
+the Virgin, and the other the Coronation of Proserpine."
+
+What a discovery!  Perspiration moistened my forehead, and a veil seemed
+to come before my eyes.  I trembled; I flushed; and, without being
+able to speak, I felt a sudden impulse to cry out at the top of my
+voice.
+
+What a treasure!  For more than forty years I had been making a
+special study of the history of Christian Gaul, and particularly of
+that glorious Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, whence issued forth
+those King-Monks who founded our national dynasty.  Now, despite the
+culpable insufficiency of the description given, it was evident to
+me that the MS. of the Clerk Alexander must have come from the great
+Abbey.  Everything proved this fact.  All the legends added by the
+translator related to the pious foundation of the Abbey by King
+Childebert.  Then the legend of Saint-Droctoveus was particularly
+significant; being the legend of the first abbot of my dear Abbey. 
+The poem in French verse on the burial of Saint-Germain led me
+actually into the nave of that venerable basilica which was the
+umbilicus of Christian Gaul.
+
+The "Golden Legend" is in itself a vast and gracious work.  Jacques
+de Voragine, Definitor of the Order of Saint-Dominic, and Archbishop
+of Genoa, collected in the thirteenth century the various legends of
+Catholic saints, and formed so rich a compilation that from all the
+monasteries and castles of the time there arouse the cry:  "This is
+the 'Golden Legend.'"  The "Legende Doree" was especially opulent in
+Roman hagiography.  Edited by an Italian monk, it reveals its best
+merits in the treatment of matters relating to the terrestrial
+domains of Saint Peter.  Voragine can only perceive the greater
+saints of the Occident as through a cold mist.  For this reason the
+Aquitanian and Saxon translators of the good legend-writer were
+careful to add to his recital the lives of their own national saints.
+
+I have read and collated a great many manuscripts of the "Golden
+Legend."  I know all those described by my learned colleague,
+M. Paulin Paris, in his handsome catalogue of the MSS. of the Biblotheque
+du Roi.  There were two among them which especially drew my attention.
+One is of the fourteenth century and contains a translation by Jean
+Belet; the other, younger by a century, presents the version of
+Jacques Vignay.  Both come from the Colbert collection, and were
+placed on the shelves of that glorious Colbertine library by the
+Librarian Baluze--whose name I can never pronounce without uncovering
+my head; for even in the century of the giants of erudition, Baluze
+astounds by his greatness.  I know also a very curious codex in the
+Bigot collection; I know seventy-four printed editions of the work,
+commencing with the venerable ancestor of all--the Gothic of Strasburg,
+begun in 1471, and finished in 1475.  But no one of those MSS., no
+one of those editions, contains the legends of Saints Ferreol,
+Ferrution, Germain, Vincent, and Droctoveus; no one bears the name
+of the Clerk Alexander; no one, in find, came from the Abbey of
+Saint-Germain-des-Pres.  Compared with the MS. described by
+Mr. Thompson, they are only as straw to gold.  I have seen with my
+eyes, I have touched with my fingers, an incontrovertible testimony
+to the existence of this document.  But the document itself--what
+has become of it?  Sir Thomas Raleigh went to end his days by the
+shores of the Lake of Como, whither he carried with him a part of
+his literary wealth.  Where did the books go after the death of that
+aristocratic collector?  Where could the manuscript of the Clerk
+Alexander have gone?
+
+"And why," I asked myself, "why should I have learned that this
+precious book exists, if I am never to possess it--never even to
+see it?  I would go to seek it in the burning heart of Africa, or
+in the icy regions of the Pole if I knew it were there.  But I do
+not know where it is.  I do not know if it be guarded in a triple-
+locked iron case by some jealous biblomaniac.  I do not know if it
+be growing mouldy in the attic of some ignoramus.  I shudder at the
+thought that perhaps its tore-out leaves may have been used to cover
+the pickle-jars of some housekeeper."
+
+
+
+August 30, 1850
+
+
+The heavy heat compelled me to walk slowly.  I kept close to the
+walls of the north quays; and, in the lukewarm shade, the shops of
+the dealers in old books, engravings, and antiquated furniture drew
+my eyes and appealed to my fancy.  Rummaging and idling among these,
+I hastily enjoyed some verses spiritedly thrown off by a poet of the
+Pleiad.  I examined an elegant Masquerade by Watteau.  I felt, with
+my eye, the weight of a two-handed sword, a steel gorgerin, a
+morion.  What a thick helmet!  What a ponderous breastplate--
+Seigneur!  A giant's garb?  No--the carapace of an insect.  The
+men of those days were cuirassed like beetles; their weakness was
+within them.  To-day, on the contrary, our strength is interior, and
+our armed souls dwell in feeble bodies.
+
+...Here is a pastel-portrait of a lady of the old time--the face,
+vague like a shadow, smiles; and a hand, gloved with an openwork
+mitten, retains upon her satiny knees a lap-dog, with a ribbon about
+its neck. That picture fills me with a sort of charming melancholy.
+Let those who have no half-effaced pastels in their own hearts laugh
+at me!  Like the horse that scents the stable, I hasten my pace as
+I near my lodgings.  There it is--that great human hive, in which
+I have a cell, for the purpose of therein distilling the somewhat
+acrid honey of erudition.  I climb the stairs with slow effort. 
+Only a few steps more, and I shall be at my own door.  But I divine,
+rather than see, a robe descending with a sound of rustling silk.
+I stop, and press myself against the balustrade to make room.  The
+lady who is coming down is bareheaded; shi is young; she sings; her
+eyes and teeth gleam in the shadow, for she laughs with lips and
+eyes at the same time.  She is certainly a neighbor, and a very
+familiar one.  She holds in her arms a pretty child, a little boy--
+quite naked, like the son of a goddess; he has a medal hung round
+his neck by a little silver chain.  I see him sucking his thumb and
+looking at me with those big eyes so newly opened on this old universe.
+The mother simultaneously looks at me in a sly, mysterious way; she
+stops--I think blushes a little--and holds out the little creature
+to me.  The baby has a pretty wrinkle between wrist and arm, a pretty
+wrinkle about his neck, and all over him, from head to foot, the
+daintiest dimples laugh in his rosy flesh.
+
+The mamma shows him to me with pride.
+
+"Monsieur," she says, "don't you think he is very pretty--my little
+boy?"
+
+She takes one tiny hand, lifts it to the child's own lips, and,
+drawing out the darling pink fingers again towards me, says,
+
+"Baby, throw the gentleman a kiss."
+
+Then, folding the little being in her arms, she flees away with the
+agility of a cat, and is lost to sight in a corridor which, judging
+by the odour, must lead to some kitchen.
+
+I enter my own quarters.
+
+"Therese, who can that young mother be whom I saw bareheaded on the
+stairs just now, with a pretty little boy?"
+
+And Therese replies that it was Madame Coccoz.
+
+I stare up at the ceiling, as if trying to obtain some further
+illumination.  Therese then recalls to me the little book-peddler who
+tried to sell me almanacs last year, while his wife was lying in.
+
+"And Coccoz himself?" I asked.
+
+I was answered that I would never see him again.  The poor little
+man had been laid away underground, without my knowledge, and,
+indeed, with the knowledge of very few people, on a short time after
+the happy delivery of Madame Coccoz.  I leaned that his wife had
+been able to console herself:  I did likewise.
+
+"But, Therese," I asked, "has Madame Coccoz got everything she needs
+in that attic of hers?"
+
+"You would be a great dupe, Monsieur," replied my housekeeper, "if
+you should bother yourself about that creature.  They gave her notice
+to quit the attic when the roof was repaired.  But she stays there
+yet--in spite of the proprietor, the agent, the concierge, and the
+bailiffs.  I think she has bewitched every one of them.  She will
+leave the attic when she pleases, Monsieur; but she is going to leave
+in her own carriage.  Let me tell you that!"
+
+Therese reflected for a moment; and then uttered these words:
+
+"A pretty face is a curse from Heaven."
+
+"Then I ought to thank Heaven for having spared me that curse.  But
+here! put my hat and cane away.  I am going to amuse myself with a
+few pages of Moreri.  If I can trust my old fox-nose, we are going
+to have a nicely flavoured pullet for dinner.  Look after that
+estimable fowl, my girl, and spare your neighbors, so that you and
+your old master may be spared by them in turn."
+
+Having thus spoken, I proceeded to follow out the tufted ramifications
+of a princely genealogy.
+
+
+
+
+May 7, 1851
+
+
+
+I have passed the winter according to the ideal of the sages, in
+angello cum libello; and now the swallows of the Quai Malaquais
+find me on their return about as when they left me.  He who lives
+little, changes little; and it is scarcely living at all to use up
+one's days over old texts.
+
+Yet I feel myself to-day a little more deeply impregnated than ever
+before with that vague melancholy which life distils.  The economy
+of my intelligence (I dare scarcely confess it to myself!) has
+remained disturbed ever since that momentous hour in which the
+existence of the manuscript of the Clerk Alexander was first revealed
+to me.
+
+It is strange that I should have lost my rest simply on account of
+a few old sheets of parchment; but it is unquestionably true.  The
+poor man who has no desires possesses the greatest of riches; he
+possesses himself.  The rich man who desires something is only a
+wretched slave.  I am just such a slave.  The sweetest pleasures--
+those of converse with some one of a delicate and well-balanced
+mind, or dining out with a friend--are insufficient to enable me
+to forget the manuscript which I know that I want, and have been
+wanting from the moment I knew of its existence.  I feel the want
+of it by day and by night:  I feel the want of it in all my joys
+and pains; I feel the want of it while at work or asleep.
+
+I recall my desires as a child.  How well I can now comprehend the
+intense wishes of my early years!
+
+I can see once more, with astonishing vividness, a certain doll
+which, when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the
+window of an ugly little shop of the Rue de Seine.  I cannot tell
+how it happened that this doll attracted me.  I was very proud of
+being a boy; I despised little girls; and I longed impatiently for
+the day (which alas! has come) when a strong beard should bristle
+on my chin.  I played at being a soldier; and, under the pretext
+of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc
+among the plants my poor mother delighted to keep on her window-sill.
+Manly amusements those, I should say!  And, nevertheless, I was
+consumed with longing for a doll.  Characters like Hercules have
+such weaknesses occasionally.  Was the one I had fallen in love with
+at all beautiful?  No.  I can see her now.  She had a splotch of
+vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands,
+and long sprawling legs.  Her flowered petticoat was fastened at
+the waist with two pins.  Even now I cans see the balck heads of
+those two pins.  It was a decidedly vulgar doll--smelt of the
+faubourg.  I remember perfectly well that, child as I was then,
+before I had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious
+in my own way that this doll lacked grace and style--that she was
+gross, that she was course.  But I loved her in spite of that; I
+loved her just for that; I loved her only; I wanted her.  My soldiers
+and my drums had become as nothing in my eyes, I ceased to stick
+sprigs of heliotrope and veronica into the mouth of my rocking-horse.
+That doll was all the world to me.  I invented ruses worthy of a
+savage to oblige Virginie, my nurse, to take me by the little shop
+in the Rue de Seine.  I would press my nose against the window until
+my nurse had to take my arm and drag me away.  "Monsieur Sylvestre,
+it is late, and your mamma will scold you."  Monsieur Sylvestre in
+those days made very little of either scoldings or whippings.  But
+his nurse lifted him up like a feather, and Monsieur Sylvestre
+yielded to force.  In after-years, with age, he degenerated, and
+sometimes yielded to fear.  But at that time he used to fear nothing.
+
+I was unhappy.  An unreasoning but irresistible shame prevented me
+from telling my mother about the object of my love.  Thence all my
+sufferings.  For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy,
+danced before my eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me,
+assuming in my imagination a sort of life which made her appear at
+once mysterious and weird, and thereby all the more charming and
+desirable.
+
+Finally, one day--a day I shall never forget--my nurse took me to
+see my uncle, Captain Victor, who had invited me to lunch.  I admired
+my uncle a great deal, as much because he had fired the last French
+cartridge at Waterloo, as because he used to prepare with his own
+hands, at my mother's table, certain chapons-a-l'ail [Crust on
+which garlic has been rubbed], which he afterwards put in the chicory
+salad.  I thought that was very fine!  My Uncle Victor also inspired
+me with much respect by his frogged coat, and still more by his way
+of turning the whole house upside down from the moment he came into
+it.  Even now I cannot tell just how he managed it, but I can affirm
+that whenever my Uncle Victor found himself in any assembly of twenty
+persons, it was impossible to see or to hear anybody but him.  My
+excellent father, I have reason to believe, never shared my admiration
+for Uncle Victor, who used to sicken him with his pipe, give him
+great thumps in the back by way of friendliness, and accuse him of
+lacking energy.  My mother, though always showing a sister's
+indulgence to the Captain, sometimes advised him to fold the brandy-
+bottle a little less frequently.  But I had no part either in these
+repugnances or these reproaches, and Uncle Victor inspired me with
+the purest enthusiasm.  It was therefore with a feeling of pride that
+I entered into the little lodging he occupied in the Rue Guenegaud.
+The entire lunch, served on a small table close to the fireplace,
+consisted of cold meats and confectionery.
+
+The Captain stuffed me with cakes and undiluted wine.  He told me of
+numberless injustices to which he had been a victim.  He complained
+particularly of the Bourbons; and as he neglected to tell me who the
+Bourbons were, I got the idea--I can't tell how--that the Bourbons
+were horse-dealers established at Waterloo.  The Captain, who never
+interrupted his talk except for the purpose of pouring out wine,
+furthermore made charges against a number of dirty scoundrels,
+blackguards, and good-for-nothings whom I did not know anything
+about, but whom I hated from the bottom of my heart.  At dessert
+I thought I heard the Captain say my father was a man who could be
+led anywhere by the nose; but I am not quite sure that I understood
+him.  I had a buzzing in my ears; and it seemed to me that the table
+was dancing.
+
+My uncle put on his frogged coat, took his bell shaped hat, and we
+descended to the street, which seemed to me singularly changed.  It
+looked to me as if I had not been in it before for ever so long
+a time.  Nevertheless, when we came to the Rue de Seine, the idea
+of my doll suddenly returned to my mind and excited me in an
+extraordinary way.  My head was on fire.  I resolved upon a desperate
+expedient.  We were passing before the window.  She was there,
+behind the glass--with her red checks, and her flowered petticoat,
+and her long legs.
+
+"Uncle," I said, with a great effort, "will you buy that doll for
+me?"
+
+And I waited.
+
+"Buy a doll for a boy--sacrebleu!" cried my uncle, in a voice of
+thunder.  "Do you wish to dishonour yourself?  And it is that old
+Mag there that you want!  Well, I must compliment you, my young
+fellow!  If you grow up with such tastes as that, you will never
+have any pleasure in life; and your comrades will call you a precious
+ninny.  If you asked me for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy
+them for you with the last silver crown of my pension.  But to buy
+a doll for you--by all that's holy!--to disgrace you!  Never in the
+world!  Why, if I were ever to see you playing with a puppet rigged
+out like that, Monsieur, my sister's son, I would disown you for my
+nephew!"
+
+On hearing these words, I felt my heart so wrung that nothing but
+pride--a diabolical pride--kept me from crying.
+
+My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the
+Bourbons; but I, still smarting under the weight of his indignation,
+felt an unspeakable shame.  My resolve was quickly made.  I promised
+myself never to disgrace myself--I firmly and for ever renounced
+that red-cheeked doll.
+
+I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of
+sacrifice.
+
+Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan,
+smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory
+nevertheless honoured--not merely because you were a brave soldier,
+but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats
+the sentiment of heroism!  Pride and laziness had made you almost
+insupportable, Uncle Victor!--but a great heart used to beat under
+those frogs upon your coat.  You always used to wear, I now remember,
+a rose in your button-hole.  That rose which you offered so readily
+to the shop-girls--that large, open-hearted flower, scattering its
+petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth.
+You despised neither wine nor tobacco; but you despised life. 
+Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you,
+Captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe
+my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abrogation that I shall never
+forget.
+
+You have now been sleeping for many years in the Cemetery of Mont-
+Parnasse, under a plain slab bearing the epitaph:
+
+                           CI-GIT
+                   ARISTIDE VICTOR MALDENT,
+                    Capitaine d'Infanterie,
+               Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
+
+But such, Captain, was not the inscription devised by yourself to
+be placed above those old bones of yours--knocked about so long on
+fields of battle and in haunts of pleasure.  Among your papers was
+found this proud and bitter epitaph, which, despite your last will
+none could have ventured to put upon your tomb:
+
+                           CI-GIT
+                    UN BRIGAND DE LA LOIRE
+
+"Therese, we will get a wreath of immortelles to-morrow, and lay
+them on the tomb of the Brigand of the Loire." ...
+
+But Therese is not here.  And how, indeed, could she be near me,
+seeing that I am at the rondpoint of the Champs-Elysees?  There,
+at the termination of the avenue, the Arc de Triomphe, which bears
+under its vaults the names of Uncle Victor's companions-in-arms,
+opens its giant gate against the sky.  The trees of the avenue are
+unfolding to the sun of spring their first leaves, still all pale
+and chilly.  Beside me the carriages keep rolling by to the Bois
+de Boulogne.  Unconsciously I have wandered into this fashionable
+avenue on my promenade, and halted, quite stupidly, in front of a
+booth stocked with gingerbread and decanters of liquorice-water,
+each topped by a lemon.  A miserable little boy, covered with rags,
+which expose his chapped skin, stares with widely opened eyes at
+those sumptuous sweets which are not for such as he.  With the
+shamelessness of innocence he betrays his longing.  His round, fixed
+eyes contemplate a certain gingerbread man of lofty stature.  It
+is a general, and it looks a little like Uncle Victor.  I take it,
+I pay for it, and present it to the little pauper, who dares not
+extend his hand to receive it--for, by reason of precocious
+experience, he cannot believe in luck; he looks at me, in the same
+way that certain big dogs do, with the air of one saying, "You are
+cruel to make fun of me like that!"
+
+"Come, little stupid," I say to him, in that rough tone I am
+accustomed to use, "take it--take it, and eat it; for you, happier
+than I was at your age, you can satisfy your tastes without
+disgracing yourself."...And you, Uncle Victor--you, whose manly
+figure has been recalled to me by that gingerbread general, come,
+glorious Shadow, help me to forget my new doll.  We remain for ever
+children, and are always running after new toys.
+
+
+
+
+Same day.
+
+
+In the oddest way that Coccoz family has become associated in my
+mind with the Clerk Alexander.
+
+"Therese," I said, as I threw myself into my easy-chair, "tell me
+if the little Coccoz is well, and whether he has got his first teeth
+yet--and bring me my slippers."
+
+"He ought to have them by this time, Monsieur," replied Therese;
+"but I never saw them.  The very first fine day of spring the mother
+disappeared with the child, leaving furniture and clothes and
+everything behind her.  They found thirty-eight empty pomade-pots in
+the attic.  It passes all belief!  She had visitors latterly; and
+you may be quite sure she is not now in a convent of nuns.  The
+niece of the concierge says she saw her driving about in a carriage
+on the boulevards.  I always told you she would end badly."
+
+"Therese," I replied, "that young woman has not ended either badly
+or well as yet.  Wait until the term of her life is over before you
+judge her.  And be careful not to talk too much with that concierge.
+It seemed to me--though I only saw her for a moment on the stairs--
+that Madame Coccoz was very fond of her child.  For that mother's
+love at least, she deserves credit."
+
+"As far as that goes, Monsieur, certainly the little one never wanted
+for anything.  In all the Quarter one could not have found a child
+better kept, or better nourished, or more petted and coddled.  Every
+day that God makes she puts a clean bib on him, and sings to him
+to make him laugh from morning till night."
+
+"Therese, a poet has said, 'That child whose mother has never smiled
+upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor of the
+couch of the goddesses.'"
+
+
+
+July 8, 1852.
+
+
+Having been informed that the Chapel of the Virgin at Saint-Germain-
+des-Pres was being repaved, I entered the church with the hope of
+discovering some old inscriptions, possibly exposed by the labours
+of the workmen.  I was not disappointed.  The architect kindly
+showed me a stone which he had just had raised up against the wall.
+I knelt down to look at the inscription engraved upon that stone;
+and then, half aloud, I read in the shadow of the old apsis these
+words, which made my heart leap:
+
+"Cy-gist Alexandre, moyne de ceste eglise, qui fist mettre en argent
+le menton de Saint-Vincent et de Saint-Amant et le pie des Innocens;
+qui toujours en son vivant fut preud'homme et vayllant.  Priez
+pour l'ame de lui."
+
+I wiped gently away with my handkerchief the dust covering that
+gravestone; I could have kissed it.
+
+"It is he! it is Alexander!" I cried out; and from the height of
+the vaults the name fell back upon me with a clang, as if broken.
+
+The silent severity of the beadle, whom I saw advancing towards me,
+made me ashamed of my enthusiasm; and I fled between the two holy
+water sprinklers with which tow rival "rats d'eglise" seemed
+desirous of barring my way.
+
+At all events it was certainly my own Alexander! there could be no
+more doubt possible; the translator of the "Golden Legend," the
+author of the saints lives of Saints Germain, Vincent, Ferreol,
+Ferrution, and Droctoveus was, just as I had supposed, a monk of
+Saint-Germain-des-Pres.  And what a monk, too--pious and generous!
+He had a silver chin, a silver head, and a silver foot made, that
+certain precious remains should be covered with an incorruptible
+envelope!  But shall I never be able to view his handiwork? or is
+this new discovery only destined to increase my regrets?
+
+
+
+August 20, 1859.
+
+
+"I, that please some, try all; both joy and terror
+ Of good and bad; that make and unfold error--
+ Now take upon me, in the name of Time
+ To use my wings.  Impute it not a crime
+ To me or my swift passage, that I slide
+ O'er years."
+
+Who speaks thus?  'Tis an old man whom I know too well.  It is Time.
+
+Shakespeare, after having terminated the third act of the "Winter's
+Tale," pauses in order to leave time for little Perdita to grow up
+in wisdom and in beauty; and when he raises the curtain again he
+evokes the ancient Scythe-bearer upon the stage to render account
+to the audience of those many long days which have weighted down
+upon the head of the jealous Leontes.
+
+Like Shakespeare in his play, I have left in this diary of mine a
+long interval to oblivion; and after the fashion of the poet, I make
+Time himself intervene to explain the omission of ten whole years.
+Ten whole years, indeed, have passed since I wrote one single line
+in this diary; and now that I take up the pen again, I have not the
+pleasure, alas! to describe a Perdita "now grown in grace."  Youth
+and beauty are the faithful companions of poets; but those charming
+phantoms scarcely visit the rest of us, even for the space of a
+season.  We do not know how to retain them with us.  If the fair
+shade of some Perdita should ever, through some inconceivable whim,
+take a notion to traverse my brain, she would hurt herself horribly
+against heaps of dog-eared parchments.  Happy the poets!--their
+white hairs never scare away the hovering shades of Helens,
+Francescas, Juliets, Julias, and Dorotheas!  But the nose alone of
+Sylvestre Bonnard would put to flight the whole swarm of love's
+heroines.
+
+Yet I, like others, have felt beauty; I have known that mysterious
+charm which Nature has lent to animate form; and the clay which
+lives has given to me that shudder of delight which makes the lover
+and the poet.  But I have never known either how to love or how to
+sing.  Now in my memory--all encumbered as it is with the rubbish
+of old texts--I can discern again, like a miniature forgotten in
+some attic, a certain bright young face, with violet eyes....  Why,
+Bonnard, my friend, what an old fool you are becoming!  Read that
+catalogue which a Florentine bookseller sent you this very morning.
+It is a catalogue of Manuscripts; and he promises you a description
+of several famous ones, long preserved by the collectors of Italy
+and Sicily.  There is something better suited to you, something
+more in keeping with your present appearance.
+
+I read; I cry out!  Hamilcar, who has assumed with the approach of
+age an air of gravity that intimidates me, looks at me reproachfully,
+and seems to ask me whether there is any rest in this world, since
+he cannot enjoy it beside me, who am old also like himself.
+
+In the sudden joy of my discovery, I need a confidant; and it is
+to the sceptic Hamilcar that I address myself with all the effusion
+of a happy man.
+
+"No, Hamilcar! no," I said to him; "there is no rest in this world,
+and the quietude which you long for is incompatible with the duties
+of life.  And you say that we are old, indeed!  Listen to what I
+read in this catalogue, and then tell me whether this is a time to
+be reposing:
+
+"'LA LEGENDE DOREE DE JACQUES DE VORAGINE;--trduction francaise du
+  quatorzieme sicle, par le Clerc Alexandre.
+
+"'Superb MS., ornamented with two miniatures, wonderfully executed,
+and in a perfect state of preservation:--one representing the
+Purification of the Virgin; the other the Coronation of Proserpine.
+
+"'At the termination of the "Legende Doree" are the Legends of Saints
+Ferreol, Ferrution, Germain, and Droctoveus (xxxviij pp.) and the
+Miraculous Sepulture of Monsieur Saint-Germain d'Auxerre (xij pp.).
+
+"'This rare manuscript, which formed part of the collection of Sir
+Thomas Raleigh, is now in the private study of Signor Michel-Angelo
+Polizzi, of Girgenti.'"
+
+"You hear that, Hamilcar?  The manuscript of the Clerk Alexander is
+in Sicily, at the house of Michel-Angelo Polizzi.  Heaven grant he
+may be a friend of learned men!  I am going to write him!"
+
+Which I did forthwith.  In my letter I requested Signor Polizzi to
+allow me to examine the manuscript of Clerk Alexander, stating on
+what grounds I ventured to consider myself worthy of so great a
+favour.  I offered at the same time to put at his disposal several
+unpublished texts in my own possession, not devoid of interest.  I
+begged him to favour me with a prompt reply, and below my signature
+I wrote down all my honorary titles.
+
+"Monsieur! Monsieur! where are you running like that?" cried Therese,
+quite alarmed, coming down the stairs in pursuit of me, four steps
+at a time, with my hat in her hand.
+
+"I am going to post a letter, Therese."
+
+"Good God! is that a way to run out in the street, bareheaded, like
+a crazy man?"
+
+"I am crazy, I know, Therese.  But who is not?  Give me my hat,
+quick!"
+
+"And your gloves, Monsieur! and your umbrella!"
+
+I had reached the bottom of the stairs, but still heard her protesting
+and lamenting.
+
+
+
+October 10, 1859.
+
+
+I awaited Signor Polizzi's reply with ill-contained impatience.  I
+could not even remain quiet; I would make sudden nervous gestures--
+open books and violently close them again.  One day I happened to
+upset a book with my elbow--a volume of Moreri.  Hamilcar, who was
+washing himself, suddenly stopped, and looked angrily at me, with
+his paw over his ear.  Was this the tumultuous existence he must
+expect under my roof?  Had there not been a tacit understanding
+between us that we should live a peaceful life?  I had broken the
+covenant.
+
+"My poor dear comrade," I made answer, "I am the victim of a violent
+passion, which agitates and masters me.  The passions are enemies
+of peace and quiet, I acknowledge; but without them there would be
+no arts or industries in the world.  Everybody would sleep naked
+on a dung-heap; and you would not be able, Hamilcar, to repose all
+day on a silken cushion, in the City of Books."
+
+I expatiated no further to Hamilcar on the theory of the passions,
+however, because my housekeeper brought me a letter.  It bore the
+postmark of Naples and read as follows:
+
+"Most Illustrious Sir,--I do indeed possess that incomparable
+manuscript of the 'Golden Legend' which could not escape your keen
+observation.  All-important reasons, however, forbid me, imperiously,
+tyrannically, to let the manuscript go out of my possession for a
+single day, for even a single minute.  It will be a joy and pride
+for me to have you examine it in my humble home in Girgenti, which
+will be embellished and illuminated by your presence.  It is with
+the most anxious expectation of your visit that I presume to sign
+myself, Seigneur Academician,
+            "Your humble and devoted servant
+                       "Michel-Angelo Polizzi,
+     "Wine-merchant and Archaeologist at Girgenti, Sicily."
+
+Well, then!  I will go to Sicily:
+
+"Extremum hunc, Arethusa, mihi concede laborem."
+
+
+
+October 25, 1859.
+
+
+My resolve had been taken and my preparations made; it only remained
+for me to notify my housekeeper.  I must acknowledge it was a long
+time before I could make up my mind to tell her I was going away.
+I feared her remonstrances, her railleries, her objurgations, her
+tears.  "She is a good, kind girl," I said to myself; "she is
+attacked to me; she will want to prevent me from going; and the Lord
+knows that when she has her mind set upon anything, gestures and
+cries cost her no effort.  In this instance she will be sure to
+call the concierge, the scrubber, the mattress-maker, and the seven
+sons of the fruit-seller; they will all kneel down in a circle
+around me; they will begin to cry, and then they will look so ugly
+that I shall be obliged to yield, so as not to have the pain of
+seeing them any more."
+
+Such were the awful images, the sick dreams, which fear marshaled
+before my imagination.  Yes, fear--"fecund Fear," as the poet says--
+gave birth to these monstrosities in my brain.  For--I may as well
+make the confession in these private pages--I am afraid of my
+housekeeper.  I am aware that she knows I am weak; and this fact
+alone is sufficient to dispel all my courage in any contest with her.
+Contests are of frequent occurrence; and I invariably succumb.
+
+But for all that, I had to announce my departure to Therese.  She
+came into the library with an armful of wood to make a little fire--
+"une flambe," she said.  For the mornings are chilly.  I watched
+her out of the corner of my eye while she crouched down at the
+hearth, with her head in the opening of the fireplace.  I do not
+know how I then found the courage to speak, but I did so without
+much hesitation.  I got up, and, walking up and down the room,
+observed in a careless tone, with that swaggering manner
+characteristic of cowards,
+
+"By the way, Therese, I am going to Sicily."
+
+Having thus spoken, I awaited the consequence with great anxiety.
+Therese did not reply.  Her head and her vast cap remained buried
+in the fireplace; and nothing in her person, which I closely
+watched, betrayed the least emotion.  She poked some paper under the
+wood, and blew up the fire.  That was all!
+
+Finally I saw her face again;--it was calm--so calm that it made
+me vexed.  "Surely," I thought to myself, "this old maid has no heart.
+She lets me go away without saying so much as AH!  Can the absence
+of her old master really affect her so little?"
+
+"Well, then go, Monsieur," she answered at last, "only be back here
+by six o'clock!  There is a dish for dinner to-day which will not
+wait for anybody."
+
+
+
+Naples, November 10, 1859.
+
+
+"Co tra calle vive, magna, e lave a faccia."
+
+I understand, my friend--for three centimes I can eat, drink, and
+wash my face, all by means of one of those slices of watermelon
+you display there on a little table.  But Occidental prejudices
+would prevent me from enjoying that simple pleasure freely and
+frankly.  And how could I suck a watermelon?  I have enough to do
+mereley to keep on my feet in this crowd.  What a luminous, noisy
+night in the Strada di Porto!  Mountains of fruit tower up in the
+shops, illuminated by multicoloured lanterns.  Upon charcoal furnaces
+lighted in the open air water boils and steams, and ragouts are
+singing in frying-pans.  The smell of fried fish and hot meats
+tickles my nose and makes me sneeze.  At this moment I find that my
+handkerchief has left the pocket of my frock-coat.  I am pushed,
+lifted up, and turned about in every direction by the gayest, the
+most talkative, the most animated and the most adroit populace
+possible to imagine;  and suddenly a young woman of the people,
+while I am admiring her magnificent hair, with a single shock of
+her powerful elastic shoulder, pushes me staggering three paces back
+at least, without injury, into the arms of a maccaroni-eater, who
+receives me with a smile.
+
+I am in Naples.  How I ever managed to arrive here, with a few
+mutilated and shapeless remains of baggage, I cannot tell, because
+I am no longer myself.  I have been travelling in a condition of
+perpetual fright; and I think that I must have looked awhile ago
+in this bright city like an owl bewildered by sunshine.  To-night
+it is much worse!  Wishing to obtain a glimpse of popular manners,
+I went to the Strada di Porto, where I now am.  All about me animated
+throngs of people crowd and press before the eating-places; and I
+float like a waif among these living surges, which, even while they
+submerge you, still caress.  For this Neopolitan people has, in its
+very vivacity, something indescribably gentle and polite.  I am not
+roughly jostled, I am merely swayed about; and I think that by dint
+of thus rocking me to and fro, these good folks want to lull me
+asleep on my feet.  I admire, as I tread the lava pavements of the
+strada, those porters and fishermen who move by me chatting,
+singing, smoking, gesticulating, quarrelling, and embracing each
+other the next moment with astonishing versatility of mood.  They
+live through all their sense at the same time; and, being philosophers
+without knowing it, keep the measure of their desires in accordance
+with the brevity of life.  I approach a much-patronised tavern, and
+see inscribed above the entrance this quatrain in Neopolitan patois:
+
+
+           "Amice, alliegre magnammo e bevimmo
+            N fin che n'ce stace noglio a la lucerna:
+            Chi sa s'a l'autro munno n'ce verdimmo?
+            Chi sa s'a l'autro munno n'ce taverna?"
+         ["Friends, let us merrily eat and drink
+           as long as oil remains in the lamp:
+           Who knows if we shall meet again in another world?
+           Who knows if in the other world there will be a tavern?"]
+
+
+Even such counsels was Horace wont to give to his friends.  You
+received them, Posthumus; you heard them also, Leuconoe, perverse
+beauty who wished to know the secrets of the future.  That future
+is now the past, and we know it well.  Of a truth you were foolish
+to worry yourselves about so small a matter; and your friend
+showed his good sense when he told you to take life wisely and to
+filter your Greek wines--"Sapias, vina liques."  Even thus the
+sight of a fair land under a spotless sky urges to the pursuit of
+quiet pleasures.  but there are souls for ever harassed by some
+sublime discontent; those are the noblest.  You were of such,
+Leuconoe; and I, visiting for the first time, in my declining years,
+that city where your beauty was famed of old, I salute with deep
+respect your melancholy memory.  Those souls of kin to your own who
+appeared in the age of Chrisitianity were souls of saints; and the
+"Golden Legend" is full of the miracles they wrought.  Your friend
+Horace left a less noble posterity, and I see one of his descendants
+in the person of that tavern poet, who at this moment is serving
+out wine in cups under the epicurean motto of his sign.
+
+And yet life decides in favour of friend Flaccus, and his philosophy
+is the only one which adapts itself to the course of events.  There
+is a fellow leaning against that trellis-work covered with vine-
+leaves, and eating an ice, while watching the stars.  He would not
+stoop even to pick up the old manuscript I am going to seek with so
+much trouble and fatigue.  And in truth man is made rather to eat
+ices than to pore over old texts.
+
+I continued to wander about among the drinkers and the singers. 
+There were lovers biting into beautiful fruit, each with an arm
+about the other's waist.  Man must be naturally bad; for all this
+strange joy only evoked in me a feeling of uttermost despondency.
+That thronging populace displayed such artless delight in the simple
+act of living, that all the shynesses begotten by my old habits as
+an author awoke and intensified into something like fright.
+Furthermore, I found myself much discouraged by my inability to
+understand a word of all the storm of chatter about me.  It was a
+humiliating experience for a philologist.  Thus I had begun to feel
+quite sulky, when I was startled to hear someone behind me observe:
+
+"Dimitri, that old man is certainly a Frenchman.  He looks so
+bewildered that I really fell sorry for him.  Shall I speak to him?
+...He has such a goo-natured look, with that round back of his--do
+you not think so, Dimitri?"
+
+It was said in French by a woman's voice.  For the moment it was
+disagreeable to hear myself spoken of as an old man.  Is a man old
+at sixty-two?  Only the other day, on the Pont des Arts, my colleague
+Perrot d'Avrignac complimented me on my youthful appearance; and I
+should think him a better authority about one's age than that young
+chatterbox who has taken it on herself to make remarks about my
+back.  My back is round, she says.  Ah! ah!  I had some suspicion
+myself to that effect, but I am not going now to believe it at all,
+since it is the opinion of a giddy-headed young woman.  Certainly
+I will not turn my head round to see who it was that spoke; but I
+am sure it was a pretty woman.  Why?  Because she talks like a
+capricious person and like a spoiled child.  Ugly women may be
+naturally quite as capricious as pretty ones; but as they are never
+petted and spoiled, and as no allowances are made for them, they
+soon find themselves obliged either to suppress their whims or to
+hide them.  On the other hand, the pretty women can be just as
+fantastical as they please.  My neighbour is evidently one of the
+latter....   But, after all, coming to think it over, she really
+did nothing worse than to express, in her own way, a kindly thought
+about me, for which I ought to feel grateful.
+
+These reflections--include the last and decisive one--passed through
+my mind in less than a second; and if I have taken a whole minute
+to tell them, it is characteristic of most philologists.  In less
+than a second, therefore, after the voice had ceased, I did turn
+round, and saw a pretty little woman--a sprightly brunette.
+
+"Madame," I said, with a bow, "excuse my involuntary indiscretion.
+I could not help overhearing what you have just said.  You would
+like to be of service to a poor old man.  And the wish, Madame, has
+already been fulfilled--the mere sound of a French voice has given
+me such pleasure that I must thank you."
+
+I bowed again, and turned to go away; but my foot slipped upon a
+melon-rind, and I should certainly have embraced the Parthenopean
+soil had not the young lady put out her hand and caught me.
+
+There is a force in circumstances--even in the very smallest
+circumstances--against which resistance is vain.  I resigned myself
+to remain the protege of the fair unknown.
+
+"It is late," she said; "do you not wish to go back to your hotel,
+which must be quite close to ours--unless it be the same one?"
+
+"Madame," I replied, "I do not know what time it is, because
+somebody has stolen my watch; but I think, as you say, that it must
+be time to retire; and I shall be very glad to regain my hotel in
+the company of such courteous compatriots."
+
+So saying, I bowed once more to the young lady, and also saluted
+her companion, a silent colossus with a gentle and melancholy face.
+
+After having gone a little way with them, I learned, among other
+matters, that my new acquaintances were the Prince and Princess
+Trepof, and that they were making a trip round the world for the
+purpose of finding match-boxes, of which they were making a
+collection.
+
+We proceeded along a narrow, tortuous vicoletto, lighted only by
+a single lamp burning in the niche of a Madonna.  The purity and
+transparency of the air gave a celestial softness and clearness to
+the very darkness itself; and one could find one's way without
+difficulty under such a limpid night.  But in a little while we
+began to pass through a "venella," or, in Neopolitan parlance, a
+sottoportico, which led under so many archways and so many far-
+projecting balconies that no gleam of light from the sky could
+reach us.  My young guide had made us take this route as a short
+cut, she assured us; but I think she did so quite as much simply
+in order to show that she felt at home in Naples, and knew the
+city thoroughly.  Indeed, she needed to know it very thoroughly
+to venture by night into that labyrinth of subterranean alleys and
+flights of steps.  If ever any many showed absolute docility in
+allowing himself to be guided, that man was myself.  Dante never
+followed the steps of Beatrice with more confidence than I felt in
+following those of Princess Trepof.
+
+The lady appeared to find some pleasure in my conversation, for
+she invited me to take a carriage-drive with her on the morrow to
+visit the grotto of Posilippo and the tomb of Virgil.  She declared
+she had seen me somewhere before; but she could not remember if it
+had been a Stockholm or at Canton.  In the former event I was a
+very celebrated professor of geology; in the latter, a provision-
+merchant whose courtesy and kindness had been much appreciated.
+One thing certain was that she had seen my back somewhere before.
+
+"Excuse me," she added; "we are continually travelling, my husband
+and I, to collect match-boxes and to change our ennui by changing
+country.  Perhaps it would be more reasonable to content ourselves
+with a single variety of ennui.  But we have made all our
+preparations and arrangements for travelling:  all our plans have
+been laid out in advance, and it gives us no trouble, whereas it
+would be very troublesome for us to stop anywhere in particular.
+I tell you all this so that you many not be surprised if my
+recollections have become a little mixed up.  But from the moment
+I first saw you at a distance this evening, I felt--in fact I knew--
+that I had seen you before.  Now the question is, 'Where was it
+that I saw you?'  You are not then, either the geologist or the
+provision-merchant?"
+
+"No, Madame," I replied, "I am neither the one nor the other; and
+I am sorry for it--since you have had reason to esteem them.  There
+is really nothing about me worthy of your interest.  I have spent
+all my life poring over books, and I have never traveled:  you
+might have known that from my bewilderment, which excited your
+compassion.  I am a member of the Institute."
+
+"You are a member of the Institute!  How nice!  Will you not write
+something for me in my album?  Do you know Chinese?  I would like
+so much to have you write something in Chinese or Persian in my
+album.  I will introduce you to my friend, Miss Fergusson, who
+travels everywhere to see all the famous people in the world.  She
+will be delighted....  Dimitri, did you hear that?--this gentleman
+is a member of the Institute, and he has passed all his life over
+books."
+
+The prince nodded approval.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, trying to engage him in our conversation, "it
+is true that something can be learned from books; but a great deal
+more can be learned by travelling, and I regret that I have not
+been able to go round the world like you.  I have lived in the same
+house for thirty years and I scarcely every go out."
+
+"Lived in the same house for thirty years!" cried Madame Trepof;
+"is it possible?"
+
+"Yes, Madame," I answered.  "But you must know the house is situated
+on the bank of the Seine, and in the very handsomest and most famous
+part of the world.  From my window I can see the Tuileries and the
+Louvre, the Pont-Neuf, the towers of Notre-Dame, the turrets of
+the Palais de Justice, and the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle.  All
+those stones speak to me; they tell me stories about the days of
+Saint-Louis, of the Valois, of Henri IV., and of Louus XIV.  I
+understand them, and I love them all.  It is only a very small
+corner of the world, but honestly, Madame, where is there a more
+glorious spot?"
+
+At this moment we found ourselves upon a public square--a largo
+steeped in the soft glow of the night.  Madame Trepof looked at
+me in an uneasy manner; her lifted eyebrows almost touched the
+black curls about her forehead.
+
+"Where do you live then?" she demanded brusquely.
+
+"On the Quai Malaquais, Madame, and my name is Bonnard.  It is not
+a name very widely known, but I am contented if my friends do not
+forget it."
+
+This revelation, unimportant as it was, produced an extraordinary
+effect upon Madame Trepof.  She immediately turned her back upon
+me and caught her husband's arm.
+
+"Come, Dimitri!" she exclaimed, "do walk a little faster.  I am
+horribly tired, and you will not hurry yourself in the least.  We
+shall never get home....  As for you, monsieur, your way lies over
+there!"
+
+She made a vague gesture in the direction of some dark vicolo,
+pushed her husband the opposite way, and called to me, without even
+turning her head.
+
+"Adieu, Monsieur!  We shall not go to Posilippo to-morrow, nor the
+day after, either.  I have a frightful headache!...  Dimitri, you
+are unendurable! will you not walk faster?"
+
+I remained for the moment stupefied, vainly trying to think what I
+could have done to offend Madame Trepof.  I had also lost my way,
+and seemed doomed to wander about all night.  In order to ask my
+way, I would have to see somebody; and it did not seem likely that
+I should find a single human being who could understand me.  In
+my despair I entered a street at random--a street, or rather a
+horrible alley that had the look of a murderous place.  It proved
+so in fact, for I had not been two minutes in it before I saw two
+men fighting with knives.  They were attacking each other more
+fiercely with their tongues than with their weapons; and I
+concluded from the nature of the abuse they were showering upon
+each other that it was a love affair.  I prudently made my way into
+a side alley while those two good fellows were still much too busy
+with their own affairs to think about mine.  I wandered hopelessly
+about for a while, and at last sat down, completely discouraged,
+on a stone bench, inwardly cursing the strange caprices of Madame
+Trepof.
+
+"How are you, Signor?  Are you back from San Carlo?  Did you hear
+the diva sing?  It is only at Naples you can hear singing like
+hers."
+
+I looked up, and recognised my host.  I had seated myself with my
+back to the facade of my hotel, under the window of my own room.
+
+
+
+
+Monte-Allegro, November 30, 1859.
+
+
+We were all resting--myself, my guides, and their mules--on a road
+from Sciacca to Girgenti, at a tavern in the miserable village of
+Monte-Allegro, whose inhabitants, consumed by the mal aria,
+continually shiver in the sun.  But nevertheless they are Greeks,
+and their gaiety triumphs over all circumstances.  A few gather
+about the tavern, full of smiling curiosity.  One good story
+would have sufficed, had I known how to tell it to them, to make
+them forget all the woes of life.  They had all a look of
+intelligence! and their women, although tanned and faded, wore
+their long black cloaks with much grace.
+
+Before me I could see old ruins whitened by the sea-wind--ruins
+about which no grass ever grows.  The dismal melancholy of deserts
+prevails over this arid land, whose cracked surface can barely
+nourish a few shriveled mimosas, cacti, and dwarf palms.  Twenty
+yards away, along the course of a ravine, stones were gleaming
+whitely like a long line of scattered bones.  They told me that was
+the bed of a stream.
+
+I had been fifteen days in Sicily.  On coming into the Bay of
+Palermo--which opens between the two mighty naked masses of the
+Pelligrino and the Catalfano, and extends inward along the "Golden
+Conch"--the view inspired me with such admiration that I resolved
+to travel a little in this island, so ennobled by historic memories,
+and rendered so beautiful by the outlines of its hills, which reveal
+the principles of Greek art.  Old pilgrim though I was, grown hoary
+in the Gothic Occident--I dared to venture upon that classic soil;
+and, securing a guide, I went from Palermo to Trapani, from Trapani
+to Selinonte, from Selinonte to Sciacca--which I left this morning
+to go to Girgenti, where I am to find the MS. of Clerk Alexander.
+The beautiful things I have seen are still so vivid in my mind that
+I feel the task of writing them would be a useless fatigue.  Why
+spoil my pleasure-trip by collecting notes?  Lovers who love truly
+do not write down their happiness.
+
+Wholly absorbed by the melancholy of the present and the poetry of
+the past, my thoughts people with beautiful shapes, and my eyes
+ever gratified by the pure and harmonious lines of the landscape,
+I was resting in the tavern at Monte-Allegro, sipping a glass of
+heavy, fiery wine, when I saw two persons enter the waiting-room,
+whom, after a moment's hesitation, I recognised as the Prince and
+Princess Trepof.
+
+This time I saw the princess in the light--and what a light!  He
+who has known that of Sicily can better comprehend the words of
+Sophocles: "Oh holy light!...  Eye of the Golden Day!"  Madame
+Trepof, dressed in a brown-holland and wearing a broad-brimmed straw
+hat, appeared to me a very pretty woman of about twenty-eight.
+Her eyes were luminous as a child's; but her slightly plump chin
+indicated the age of plenitude.  She is, I must confess it, quite
+an attractive person.  She is supple and changeful; her mood is
+like water itself--and, thank Heaven! I am no navigator.  I thought
+I discerned in her manner a sort of ill-humour, which I attributed
+presently, by reason of some observations she uttered at random,
+to the fact that she had met no brigands upon her route.
+
+"Such things only happen to us!" she exclaimed, with a gesture of
+discouragement.
+
+She called for a glass of iced water, which the landlord presented
+to her with a gesture that recalled to me those scenes of funeral
+offerings painted upon Greek vases.
+
+I was in no hurry to introduce myself to a lady who had so abruptly
+dropped my acquaintance in the public square at Naples; but she
+perceived me in my corner, and her frown notified me very plainly
+that our accidental meeting was disagreeable to her.
+
+After she had sipper her ice-water for a few moments--whether because
+her whim had suddenly changed, or because my loneliness aroused her
+pity, I did not know--she walked directly to me.
+
+"Good-day, Monsieur Bonnard," she said.  "How do you do?  What strange
+chance enables us to meet again in this frightful country?"
+
+"This country is not frightful, Madame," I replied.  "Beauty is so
+great and so august a quality that centuries of barbarism cannot
+efface it so completely that adorable vestiges of it will not always
+remain.  The majesty of the antique Ceres still overshadows these
+arid valleys; and that Greek Muse who made Arethusa and Maenalus
+ring with her divine accents, still sings for my ears upon the barren
+mountain and in the place of the dried-up spring.  Yes, Madame, when
+our globe, no longer inhabited, shall, like the moon, roll a wan
+corpse through space, the soil which bears the ruins of Selinonte
+will still keep the seal of beauty in the midst of universal death;
+and then, then, at least there will be no frivolous mouth to blaspheme
+the grandeur of these solitudes."
+
+I knew well enough that my words were beyond the comprehension of the
+pretty little empty-head which heard them.  But an old fellow like
+myself who has worn out his life over books does not know how to
+adapt his tone to circumstances.  Besides I wished to give Madame
+Trepof a lesson in politeness.  She received it with so much
+submission, and with such an air of comprehension, that I hastened to
+add, as good-naturedly as possible,
+
+"As to whether the chance which has enabled me to meet you again be
+lucky or unlucky, I cannot decide the question until I am sure that
+my presence be not disagreeable to you.  You appeared to become weary
+of my company very suddenly at Naples the other day.  I can only
+attribute that misfortune to my naturally unpleasant manner--since,
+on that occasion, I had had the honour of meeting you for the first
+time in my life."
+
+These words seem to cause her inexplicable joy.  She smiled upon me
+in the most gracious, mischievous way, and said very earnestly,
+holding out her hand, which I touched with my lips,
+
+"Monsieur Bonnard, do not refuse to accept a seat in my carriage.
+You can chat with me on the way about antiquity, and that will amuse
+me ever so much."
+
+"My dear," exclaimed the prince, "you can do just as you please; but
+you ought to remember that one is horribly cramped in that carriage
+of yours; and I fear that you are only offering Monsieur Bonnard
+the chance of getting a frightful attack of lumbago."
+
+Madame Trepof simply shook her head by way of explaining that such
+considerations had no weight with her whatever; then she untied her
+hat.  The darkness of her black curls descended over her eyes, and
+bathed them in velvety shadow.  She remained a little while quite
+motionless, and her face assumed a surprising expression of reverie.
+But all of a sudden she darted at some oranges which the tavern-keeper
+had brought in a basket, and began to throw them, one by one, into a
+fold of her dress.
+
+"These will be nice on the road," she said.  "We are going just where
+you are going--to Girgenti.  I must tell you all about it.  you know
+that my husband is making a collection of match-boxes.  We bought
+thirteen hundred match-boxes at Marseilles.  But we heard there was
+a factory of them at Girgenti.  According to what we were told, it
+is a very small factory, and its products--which are very ugly--never
+go outside the city and its suburbs.  So we are going to Girgenti just
+to buy match-boxes.  Dimitri has been a collector of all sorts of
+things; but the only kind of collection which can now interest him
+is a collection of match-boxes.  He has already got five thousand
+two hundred and fourteen different kinds.  Some of them gave us
+frightful trouble to find.  For instance, we knew that at Naples
+boxes were once made with the portraits of Mazzini and Garibaldi on
+them; and that the police had seized the plates from which the
+portraits were printed, and put the manufacturer in gaol.  Well, by
+dint of searching and inquiring for ever so long a while, we found
+one of those boxes at last for sale at one hundred francs, instead
+of two sous.  It was not really too dear at that price; but we were
+denounced for buying it.  We were taken for conspirators.  All our
+baggage was searched; they could not find the box, because I had
+hidden it so well; but they found my jewels, and carried them off.
+They have them still.  The incident made quite a sensation, and we
+were going to get arrested.  But the king was displeased about it,
+and he ordered them to leave us alone.  Up to that time, I used to
+think it was very stupid to collect match-boxes; but when I found
+that there were risks of losing liberty, and perhaps even life, by
+doing it, I began to feel a taste for it.  Now I am an absolute
+fanatic on the subject.  We are going to Sweden next summer to
+complete our series....  Are we not, Dimitri?"
+
+I felt--must I confess it?--a thorough sympathy with these intrepid
+collectors.  No doubt I would rather have found Monsieur and Madame
+Trepof engaged in collecting antique marbles or painted vases in
+Sicily.  I should have like to have found them interested in the
+ruins of Syracuse, or the poetical traditions of the Eryx.  But at
+all events, they were making some sort of a collection--they belonged
+to the great confraternity--and I could not possibly make fun of them
+without making fun of myself.  Besides, Madame Trepof had spoken of
+her collection with such an odd mingling of irony and enthusiasm that
+I could not help finding the idea a very good one.
+
+We were getting ready to leave the tavern, when we noticed some
+people coming downstairs from the upper room, carrying carbines under
+their dark cloaks.  to me they had the look of thorough bandits; and
+after they were gone I told Monsieur Trepof my opinion of them.  He
+answered me, very quietly, that he also thought they were regular
+bandits; and the guides begged us to apply for an escort of gendarmes,
+but Madame Trepof besought us not to do anything of the kind.  She
+declared that we must not "spoil her journey."
+
+Then, turning her persuasive eyes upon me, she asked,
+
+"Do you not believe, Monsieur Bonnard, that there is nothing in life
+worth having except sensations?"
+
+"Why, certainly, Madame," I answered; "but then we must take into
+consideration the nature of the sensations themselves.  Those which
+a noble memory or a grand spectacle creates within us certainly
+represent what is best in human life; but those merely resulting
+from the menace of danger seem to me sensations which one should be
+very careful to avoid as much as possible.  For example, would you
+think it a very pleasant thing, Madame, while travelling over the
+mountains at midnight, to find the muzzle of a carbine suddenly
+pressed against your forehead?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she replied; "the comic-operas have made carbines absolutely
+ridiculous, and it would be a great misfortune to any young woman
+to find herself in danger from an absurd weapon.  But it would be
+quite different with a knife--a very cold and very bright knife blade,
+which makes a cold shudder go right through one's heart."
+
+She shuddered even as she spoke; closed her eyes, and threw her head
+back.  Then she resumed:
+
+"People like you are so happy!  You can interest yourselves in all
+sorts of things!"
+
+She gave a sidelong look at her husband, who was talking with the
+innkeeper.  Then she leaned towards me, and murmured very low:
+
+"You see, Dimitri and I, we are both suffering from ennui!  We
+have still the match-boxes.  But at last one gets tired even of
+match-boxes.  Besides, our collection will soon be complete.  And
+then what are we going to do?"
+
+"Oh, Madame!" I exclaimed, touched by the moral unhappiness of this
+pretty person, "if you only had a son, then you would know what to
+do.  You would then learn the purpose of your life, and your thoughts
+would become at once more serious and yet more cheerful."
+
+"But I have a son," she replied.  "He is a big boy; he is eleven
+years old, and he suffers from ennui like the rest of us.  Yes, my
+George has ennui, too; he is tired of everything.  It is very
+wretched."
+
+She glanced again towards her husband, who was superintending the
+harnessing of the mules on the road outside--testing the condition
+of girths and straps.  Then she asked me whether there had been many
+changes on the Quai Malaquais during the past ten years.  She declared
+she never visited that neighbourhood because it was too far way.
+
+"Too far from Monte Allegro?" I queried.
+
+"Why, no!" she replied.  "Too far from the Avenue des Champs Elysees,
+where we live."
+
+And she murmured over again, as if talking to herself, "Too far!--too
+far!" in a tone of reverie which I could not possibly account for.
+All at once she smiled again, and said to me,
+
+"I like you, Monsieur Bonnard!--I like you very, very much!"
+
+The mules had been harnessed.  The young woman hastily picked up a
+few oranges which had rolled off her lap; rose up; looked at me,
+and burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "how I should like to see you grappling with the
+brigands!  You would say such extraordinary things to them!... 
+Please take my hat, and hold my umbrella for me, Monsieur Bonnard."
+
+"What a strange little mind!" I thought to myself, as I followed
+her.  "It could only have been in a moment of inexcusable
+thoughtlessness that Nature gave a child to such a giddy little
+woman!"
+
+
+
+Girgenti.  Same day.
+
+
+Her manners had shocked me.  I left her to arrange herself in her
+lettica, and I made myself as comfortable as I could in my own.
+These vehicles, which have no wheels, are carried by two mules--one
+before and one behind.  This kind of litter, or chaise, is of ancient
+origin.  I had often seen representations of similar ones in the
+French MSS. of the fourteenth century.  I had no idea then that one
+of those vehicles would be at a future day placed at my own disposal.
+We must never be too sure of anything.
+
+For three hours the mules sounded their little bells, and thumped
+the calcined ground with their hoofs.  On either hand there slowly
+defiled by us the barren monstrous shapes of a nature totally African.
+
+Half-way we made a halt to allow our animals to recover breath.
+
+Madame Trepof came to me on the road, took my arm, and drew me a
+little away from the party.  Then, very suddenly, she said to me in
+a tone of voice I had never heard before:
+
+"Do not think that I am a wicked woman.  My George knows that I am a
+good mother."
+
+We walked side by side for a moment in silence.  She looked up, and
+I saw that she was crying.
+
+"Madame," I said to her, "look at this soil which has been burned
+and cracked by five long months of fiery heat.  A little white lily
+has sprung up from it."
+
+And I pointed with my cane to the frail stalk, tipped by a double
+blossom.
+
+"Your heart," I said, "however arid it be, bears also its white
+lily; and that is reason enough why I do not believe that you are
+what you say--a wicked woman."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes!" she cried, with the obstinacy of a child--"I am a
+wicked woman.  But I am ashamed to appear so before you who are so
+good--so very, very good."
+
+"You do not know anything at all about it," I said to her.
+
+"I know it!  I know all about you, Monsieur Bonnard!" she declared,
+with a smile.
+
+And she jumped back into her lettica.
+
+
+
+Girgenti, November 30, 1859.
+
+
+I awoke the following morning in the House of Gellias.  Gellias was
+a rich citizen of ancient Agrigentum.  He was equally celebrated
+for his generosity and for his wealth; and he endowed his native
+city with a great number of free inns.  Gellias has been dead for
+thirteen hundred years; and nowadays there is no gratuitous
+hospitality among civilised peoples.  But the name of Gellias has
+become that of a hotel in which, by reason of fatigue, I was able to
+obtain one good night's sleep.
+
+The modern Girgenti lifts its high, narrow, solid streets, dominated
+by a sombre Spanish cathedral, upon the side of the acropolis of
+the antique Agrigentum.  I can see from my windows, half-way on the
+hillside towards the sea, the white range of temples partially
+destroyed.  The ruins alone have some aspect of coolness.  All the
+rest is arid.  Water and life have forsaken Agrigentine.  Water--the
+divine Nestis of the Agrigentine Empedocles--is so necessary to
+animated beings that nothing can live far from the rivers and the
+springs.  But the port of Girgenti, situated at a distance of three
+kilometres from the city, has a great commerce.  "And it is in this
+dismal city," I said to myself, "upon this precipitous rock, that
+the manuscript of Clerk Alexander is to be found!"  I asked my way
+to the house of Signor Michel-Angelo Polizzi, and proceeded thither.
+
+I found Signor Polizzi, dressed all in white from head to feet, busy
+cooking sausages in a frying-pan.  At the sight of me, he let go
+the frying-pan, threw up his arms in the air, and uttered shrieks
+of enthusiasm.  He was a little man whose pimply features, aquiline
+nose, round eyes, and projecting chin formed a very expressive
+physiognomy.
+
+He called me "Excellence," said he was going to mark the day with a
+white stone, and made me sit down.  The hall in which we were
+represented the union of the kitchen, reception-room, bedchamber,
+studio, and wine-cellar.  There were charcoal furnaces visible, a
+bed, paintings, an easel, bottles, strings of onions, and a
+magnificent lustre of coloured glass pendants.  I glanced at the
+paintings on the wall.
+
+"The arts! the arts!" cried Signor Polizzi, throwing up his arms
+again to heaven--"the arts!  What dignity! what consolation!
+Excellence, I am a painter!"
+
+And he showed me an unfinished Saint-Francis, which indeed could
+very well remain unfinished for ever without any loss to religion
+or to art.  Next he showed me some old paintings of a better style,
+but apparently restored after a decidedly reckless manner.
+
+"I repair," he said--"I repair old paintings.  Oh, the Old Masters!
+What genius, what soul!"
+
+"Why, then," I said to him, "you must be a painter, an archaeologist,
+and a wine-merchant all in one?"
+
+"At your service, Excellence," he answered.  "I have a zucco here
+at this very moment--a zucco of which every single drop is a pearl
+of fire.  I want your Lordship to taste of it."
+
+"I esteem the wines of Sicily," I responded, "but it was not for the
+sake of your flagons that I came to see you , Signor Polizzi."
+
+He:  "Then you have come to see me about paintings.  You are an
+amateur.  It is an immense delight for me to receive amateurs.  I
+am going to show you the chef-d'oeuvre of Monrealese; yes,
+Excellence, his chef-d'oeuvre!  An Adoration of Shepherds!  It is
+the pearl of the whole Sicilian school!"
+
+I:  "Later on I will be glad to see the chef-d'oeuvre; but let us
+first talk about the business which brings me here."
+
+His little quick bright eyes watched my face curiously; and I
+perceived, with anguish, that he had not the least suspicion of the
+purpose of my visit.
+
+A cold sweat broke out over my forehead; and in the bewilderment of
+my anxiety I stammered out something to this effect:
+
+"I have come from Paris expressly to look at a manuscript of the
+Legende Doree, which you informed me was in your possession."
+
+At these words he threw up his arms, opened his mouth and eyes to
+the widest possible extent, and betrayed every sign of extreme
+nervousness.
+
+"Oh! the manuscript of the 'Golden Legend!'  A pearl, Excellence!
+a ruby, a diamond!  Two miniatures so perfect that they give one
+the feeling of glimpses of Paradise!  What suavity!  Those colours
+ravished from the corollas of flowers make a honey for the eyes!
+Even a Sicilian could have done no better!"
+
+"Let me see it, then," I asked; unable to conceal either my anxiety
+or my hope.
+
+"Let you see it!" cried Polizzi.  "But how can I, Excellence?  I
+have not got it any longer!  I have not got it!"
+
+And he seemed determined to tear out his hair.  He might indeed have
+pulled every hair in his head out of his hide before I should have
+tried to prevent him.  But he stopped of his own accord, before he
+had done himself any grievous harm.
+
+"What!" I cried out in anger--"what! you make me come all the way
+from Paris to Girgenti, by promising to show me a manuscript, and
+now, when I come, you tell me you have not got it!  It is simply
+infamous, Monsieur!  I shall leave your conduct to be judged by all
+honest men!"
+
+Anybody who could have seen me at that moment would have been able
+to form a good idea of the aspect of a furious sheep.
+
+"It is infamous! it is infamous!" I repeated, waving my arms, which
+trembled from anger.
+
+Then Michel-Angelo Polizzi let himself fall into a chair in the
+attitude of a dying hero.  I saw his eyes fill with tears, and his
+hair--until then flamboyant and erect upon his head--fall down in
+limp disorder over his brow.
+
+"I am a father, Excellence!  I am a father!" he groaned, wringing
+his hands.
+
+He continued, sobbing:
+
+"My son Rafael--the son of my poor wife, for whose death I have been
+mourning fifteen years--Rafael, Excellence, wanted to settle at Paris;
+he hired a shop in the Rue Lafitte for the sale of curiosities.  I
+gave him everything precious which I had--I gave him my finest
+majolicas; my most beautiful Urbino ware; my masterpieces of art;
+what paintings, Signor!  Even now they dazzle me with I see them only
+in imagination!  And all of them signed!  Finally, I gave him the
+manuscript of the 'Golden Legend'!  I would have given him my flesh
+and my blood!  An only son, Signor! the son of my poor saintly wife!"
+
+"So," I said, "while I--relying on your written word, Monsieur--was
+travelling to the very heart of Sicily to find the manuscript of the
+Clerk Alexander, the same manuscript was actually exposed for sale
+in a window in the Rue Lafitte, only fifteen hundred yards from my
+house?"
+
+"Yes, it was there! that is positively true!" exclaimed Signor
+Polizzi, suddenly growing calm again; "and it is there still--at least
+I hope it is, Excellence."
+
+He took a card from a shelf as he spoke, and offered it to me, saying,
+
+"Here is the address of my son.  Make it known to your friends, and
+you will oblige me.  Faience and enameled wares; hangings; pictures.
+He has a complete stock of objects of art--all at the fairest possible
+prices--and everything authentic, I can vouch for it, upon my honour!
+Go and see him.  He will show you the manuscript of the 'Golden
+Legend.'  Two miniatures miraculously fresh in colour!"
+
+I was feeble enough to take the card he held out to me.
+
+The fellow was taking further advantage of my weakness to make me
+circulate the name of Rafael Polizzi among the Societies of the
+learned!
+
+My hand was already on the door-knob, when the Sicilian caught me by
+the arm; he had a look as of sudden inspiration.
+
+"Ah!  Excellence!" he cried, "what a city is this city of ours!  It
+gave birth to Empedocles!  Empedocles!  What a great man what a
+great citizen!  What audacity of thought! what virtue! what soul!
+At the port over there is a statue of Empedocles, before which I
+bare my head each time that I pass by!  When Rafael, my son, was
+going away to found an establishment of antiquities in the Rue
+Lafitte, at Paris, I took him to the port, and there, at the foot
+of that statue of Empedocles, I bestowed upon him my paternal
+benediction!  'Always remember Empedocles!' I said to him.  Ah!
+Signor, what our unhappy country needs to-day is a new Empedocles!
+Would you not like me to show you the way to his statue, Excellence?
+I will be your guide among the ruins here.  I will show you the temple
+of Castor and Pollux, the temple of the Olympian Jupiter, the temple
+of the Lucinian Juno, the antique well, the tomb of Theron, and the
+Gate of Gold!  All the professional guides are asses; but we--we
+shall make excavations, if you are willing--and we shall discover
+treasures!  I know the science of discovering hidden treasures--the
+secret art of finding their whereabouts--a gift from Heaven!"
+
+I succeeded in tearing myself away from his grasp.  But he ran after
+me again, stopped me at the foot of the stairs, and said in my ear,
+
+"Listen, Excellence.  I will conduct you about the city; I will
+introduce you to some Girgentines!  What a race! what types! what
+forms!  Sicilian girls, Signor!--the antique beauty itself!"
+
+"Go to the devil!" I cried at last, in anger, and rushed into the
+street, leaving him still writhing in the loftiness of his enthusiasm.
+
+When I had got out of his sight, I sank down upon a stone, and began
+to think, with my face in my hands.
+
+"And it was for this," I said to myself--"it was to hear such
+propositions as this that I came to Sicily!  That Polizzi is simply a
+scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin
+me."  But what was their scheme?  I could not unravel it.  Meanwhile,
+it may be imagined how discouraged and humiliated I felt.
+
+A merry burst of laughter caused me to turn my head, and I saw Madame
+Trepof running in advance of her husband, and holding up something
+which I could not distinguish clearly.
+
+She sat down beside me, and showed me--laughing more merrily all the
+while--an abominable little paste-board box, on which was printed a
+red and blue face, which the inscription declared to be the face of
+Empedocles.
+
+"Yes, Madame," I said, "but that abominable Polizzi, to whom I advise
+you not to send Monsieur Trepof, has made me fall out for ever with
+Empedocles; and this portrait is not at all of a nature to make me
+feel more kindly to the ancient philosopher."
+
+"Oh!" declared Madame Trepof, "it is ugly, but it is rare!  These
+boxes are not exported at all; you can buy them only where they are
+made.  Dimitri has six others just like this in his pocket.  We
+got them so as to exchange with other collectors.  You understand?
+At none o'clock this morning we were at the factory.  You see we
+did not waste our time."
+
+"So I certainly perceive, Madame," I replied, bitterly; "but I have
+lost mine."
+
+I then saw that she was a naturally good-hearted woman.  All her
+merriment vanished.
+
+"Poor Monsieur Bonnard! poor Monsieur Bonnard!" she murmured.
+
+And, taking my hand in hers, she added:
+
+"Tell me about your troubles."
+
+I told her about them.  My story was long; but she was evidently
+touched by it, for she asked me quite a number of circumstantial
+questions, which I took for proof of her friendly interest.  She
+wanted to know the exact title of the manuscript, its shape, its
+appearance, and its age; she asked me for the address of Signor Rafael
+Polizzi.
+
+And I gave it to her; thus doing (O destiny!) precisely what the
+abominable Polizzi had told me to do.
+
+It is sometimes difficult to check oneself.  I recommenced my plaints
+and my imprecations.  But this time Madame Trepof only burst out
+laughing.
+
+"Why do you laugh?" I asked her.
+
+"Because I am a wicked woman," she answered.
+
+And she fled away, leaving me all disheartened on my stone.
+
+
+
+Paris, December 8, 1859.
+
+
+My unpacked trunks still encumbered the hall.  I was seated at a
+tabled covered with all those good things which the land of France
+produces for the delectation of gourmets.  I was eating a pate
+le Chartres, which is alone sufficient to make one love one's
+country.  Therese, standing before me with her hands joined over her
+white apron, was looking at me with benignity, with anxiety, and with
+pity.  Hamilcar was rubbing himself against my legs, wild with
+delight.
+
+These words of an old poet came back to my memory:
+
+"Happy is he who, like Ulysses, hath made a goodly journey."
+
+..."Well," I thought to myself, "I travelled to no purpose; I have
+come back with empty hands; but, like Ulysses, I made a goodly
+journey."
+
+And having taken my last sip of coffee, I asked Therese for my hat
+and cane, which she gave me not without dire suspicions; she feared
+I might be going upon another journey.  But I reassured her by telling
+her to have dinner ready at six o'clock.
+
+It had always been a keen pleasure for me to breathe the air in those
+Parisian streets whose every paving-slab and every stone I love
+devotedly.  But I had an end in view, and I took my way straight to
+the Rue Lafitte.  I was not long in find the establishment of Signor
+Rafael Polizzi.  It was distinguishable by a great display of old
+paintings which, although all bearing the signature of some
+illustrious artist, had a certain family air of resemblance that
+might have suggested some touching idea about the fraternity of
+genius, had it not still more forcibly suggested the professional
+tricks of Polizzi senior.  Enriched by these doubtful works of art,
+the shop was further rendered attractive by various petty curiosities:
+poniards, drinking-vessels, goblets, figulines, brass guadrons,
+and Hispano-Arabian wares of metallic lustre.
+
+Upon a Portuguese arm-chair, decorated with an escutcheon, lay a copy
+of the "Heures" of Simon Vostre, open at the page which has an
+astrological figure on it; and an old Vitruvius, placed upon a quaint
+chest, displayed its masterly engravings of caryatides and telamones.
+This apparent disorder which only masked cunning arrangement, this
+factitious hazard which had placed the best objects in the most
+favourable light, would have increased my distrust of the place, but
+that the distrust which the mere name of Polizzi had already inspired
+could not have been increased by any circumstances--being already
+infinite.
+
+Signor Rafael, who sat there as the presiding genius of all these
+vague and incongruous shapes, impressed me as a phlegmatic young man,
+with a sort of English character.  he betrayed no sign whatever of
+those transcendent faculties displayed by his father in the arts of
+mimcry and declamation.
+
+I told him what I had come for; he opened a cabinet and drew from it
+a manuscript, which he placed on a table that I might examine it at
+my leisure.
+
+Never in my life did I experience such an emotion--except, indeed,
+during some few brief months of my youth, months whose memories,
+though I should live a hundred years, would remain as fresh at my
+last hour as in the first day they came to me.
+
+It was, indeed, the very manuscript described by the librarian of
+Sir Thomas Raleigh; it was, indeed, the manuscript of the Clerk
+Alexander which I saw, which I touched!  The work of Voragine himself
+had been perceptibly abridged; but that made little difference to
+me.  All the inestimable additions of the monk of Saint-Germain-
+des-Pres were there.  That was the main point!  I tried to read the
+Legend of Saint Droctoveus; but I could not--all the lines of the
+page quivered before my eyes, and there was a sound in my ears like
+the noise of a windmill in the country at night.  Nevertheless, I
+was able to see that the manuscript offered every evidence of
+indubitable authenticity.  The two drawings of the Purification of
+the Virgin and the Coronationof Proserpine were meagre in design
+and vulgar in violence of colouring.  Considerably damaged in 1824,
+as attested by the catalogue of Sir Thomas, they had obtained
+during the interval a new aspect of freshness.  But this miracle
+did not surprise me at all.  And, besides, what did I care about
+the two miniatures?  The legends and the poem of Alexander--those
+alone formed the treasure I desired.  My eyes devoured as much of
+it as they had the power to absorb.
+
+I affected indifference while asking Signor Polizzi the price of the
+manuscript; and, while awaiting his reply, I offered up a secret
+prayer that the price might not exceed the amount of ready money
+at my disposal--already much diminished by the cost of my expensive
+voyage.  Signor Polizzi, however, informed me that he was not at
+liberty to dispose of the article, inasmuch as it did not belong
+to him, and was to be sold at auction shortly, at the Hotel des
+Ventes, with a number of other MSS. and several incunabula.
+
+This was a severe blow to me.  It tried to preserve my calmness,
+notwithstanding, and replied somewhat to this effect:
+
+"You surprise me, Monsieur!  Your father, whom I talked with recently
+at Girgenti, told me positively that the manuscript was yours.  You
+cannot now attempt to make me discredit your father's word."
+
+"I DID own the manuscript, indeed," answered Signor Rafael with
+absolute frankness; "but I do not own it any longer.  I sold that
+manuscript--the remarkable interest of which you have not failed
+to perceive--to an amateur whom I am forbidden to name, and who,
+for reasons which I am not at liberty to mention, finds himself
+obliged to sell his collection.  I am honoured with the confidence
+of my customer, and was commissioned by him to draw up the catalogue
+and manage the sale, which takes place the 24th of December.  Now,
+if you will be kind enough to give me your address, I shall have
+the pleasure of sending you the catalogue, which is already in
+the press.  you fill find the 'Legende Doree' described in it as
+'No. 42.'"
+
+I gave my address, and left the shop.
+
+The polite gravity of the son impressed me quite as disagreeably as
+the impudent buffoonery of the father.  I hated, from the bottom of
+my heart, the tricks of the vile hagglers!  It was perfectly evident
+that the two rascals had a secret understanding, and had only devised
+this auction-sale, with the aid of a professional appraiser, to force
+the bidding on the manuscript I wanted so much up to an outrageous
+figure.  I was completely at their mercy.  There is one evil in all
+passionate desires, even the noblest--namely, that they leave us
+subject to the will of others, and in so far dependent.  This
+reflection made me suffer cruelly; but it did not conquer my longing
+to won the work of Clerk Alexander.  While I was thus meditating, I
+heard a coachman swear.  And I discovered it was I whom he was
+swearing at only when I felt the pole of a carriage poke me in the
+ribs.  I started aside, barely in time to save myself from being run
+over; and whom did I perceive through the windows of the coupe?
+Madame Trepof, being taken by two beautiful horses, and a coachman
+all wrapped up in furs like a Russian Boyard, into the very street
+I had just left.  She did not notice me; she was laughing to herself
+with that artless grace of expression which still preserved for her,
+at thirty years, all the charm of her early youth.
+
+"Well, well!" I said to myself, "she is laughing!  I suppose she must
+have just found another match-box."
+
+And I made my way back to the Ponts, feeling very miserable.
+
+Nature, eternally indifferent, neither hastened nor hurried the
+twenty-fourth day of December.  I went to the Hotel Bullion, and
+took my place in Salle No. 4, immediately below the high desk at
+which the auctioneer Boulouze and the expert Polizzi were to sit.
+I saw the hall gradually fill with familiar faces.  I shook hands
+with several old booksellers of the quays; but that prudence which
+any large interest inspires in even the most self-assured caused me
+to keep silence in regard to the reason of my unaccustomed presence
+in the halls of the Hotel Bullion.  On the other hand, I questioned
+those gentlemen at the auction sale; and I had teh satisfaction of
+finding them all interested about matters in no wise related to my
+affair.
+
+Little by little the hall became thronged with interested or merely
+curious spectators; and, after half an hour's delay, the auctioneer
+with his ivory hammer, the clerk with his bundle of memorandum-papers,
+and the crier, carrying his collection-box fixed to the end of a
+pole, all took their places on the platform in the most solemn
+business manner.  The attendants ranged themselves at the foot of the
+desk.  The presiding officer having declared the sale open, a partial
+hush followed.
+
+A commonplace series of Preces dia, with miniatures, were first sold
+off at mediocre prices.  Needless to say, the illuminations of these
+books were in perfect condition!
+
+The lowness of the bids gave courage to the gathering of second-hand
+booksellers present, who began to mingle with us, and become more
+familiar.  The dealers in old brass and bric-a-brac pressed forward
+in their tun, waiting for the doors of an adjoining room to be
+opened; and the voice of the auctioneer was drowned by the jests of
+the Auvergnats.
+
+A magnificent codex of the "Guerre des Juifs" revived attention.  It
+was long disputed for.  "Five thousand francs! five thousand!" called
+the crier, while the bric-a-brac dealers remained silent with
+admiration.  Then seven or eight antiphonaries brought us back again
+to low prices.  A fat old woman, in a loose gown, bareheaded--a
+dealer in second-hand goods--encouraged by the size of the books and
+the low prices bidden, had one of the antiphonaries knocked down to
+her for thirty francs.
+
+At last the expert Polizzi announced No. 42: "The 'Golden Legend';
+French MS.; unpublished; two superb miniatures, with a starting bid
+of three thousand francs."
+
+"Three thousand! three thousand bid!" yelled the crier.
+
+"Three thousand!" dryly repeated the auctioneer.
+
+There was a buzzing in my head, and, as through a cloud, I saw a host
+of curious faces all turning towards the manuscript, which a boy was
+carrying open through the audience.
+
+"Three thousand and fifty!" I said.
+
+I was frightened by the sound of my own voice, and further confused
+by seeing, or thinking that I saw, all eyes turned on me.
+
+"Three thousand and fifty on the right!" called the crier, taking
+up my bid.
+
+"Three thousand one hundred!" responded Signor Polizzi.
+
+Then began a heroic duel between the expert and myself.
+
+"Three thousand five hundred!"
+
+"Six hundred!"
+
+"Seven hundred!"
+
+"Four thousand!"
+
+"Four thousand five hundred."
+
+Then by a sudden bold stroke, Signor Polizzi raised the bid at once
+to six thousand.
+
+Six thousand francs was all the money I could dispose of.  It
+represented the possible.  I risked the impossible.
+
+"Six thousand one hundred!"
+
+Alas! even the impossible did not suffice.
+
+"Six thousand five hundred!" replied Signor Polizzi, with calm.
+
+I bowed my head and sat there stupefied, unable to answer either yes
+or no to the crier, who called to me:
+
+"Six thousand five hundred, by me--not by you on the right there!--it
+is my bid--no mistake!  Six thousand five hundred!"
+
+"Perfectly understood!" declared the auctioneer.  "Six thousand five
+hundred.  Perfectly clear; perfectly plain....  Any more bids?  The
+last bid is six thousand five hundred francs."
+
+A solemn silence prevailed.  Suddenly I felt as if my head had burst
+open.  It was the hammer of the officiant, who, with a loud blow on
+the platform, adjudged No. 42 irrevocably to Signor Polizzi. 
+Forthwith the pen of the clerk, coursing over the papier-timbre,
+registered that great fact in a single line.
+
+I was absolutely prostrated, and I felt the utmost need of rest and
+quiet.  Nevertheless, I did not leave my seat.  My powers of
+reflection slowly returned.  Hope is tenacious.  I had one more hope.
+It occurred to me that the new owner of the "Legende Doree" might be
+some intelligent and liberal bibliophile who would allow me to examine
+the MS., and perhaps even to publish the more important parts.  And,
+with this idea, as soon as the sale was over I approached the expert
+as he was leaving the platform.
+
+"Monsieur," I asked him, "did you buy in No. 42 on your own account,
+or on commission?"
+
+"On commission.  I was instructed not to let it go at any price."
+
+"Can you tell me the name of the purchaser?"
+
+"Monsieur, I regret that I cannot serve you in that respect.  I have
+been strictly forbidden to mention the name."
+
+I went home in despair.
+
+
+
+December 30, 1859.
+
+
+"Therese! don't you hear the bell?  Somebody has been ringing at the
+door for the last quarter of an hour?"
+
+Therese does not answer.  She is chattering downstairs with the
+concierge, for sure.  So that is the way you observe your old master's
+birthday?  You desert me even on the eve of Saint-Sylvestre!  Alas!
+if I am to hear any kind wishes to-day, they must come up from the
+ground; for all who love me have long been buried.  I really don't
+know what I am still living for.  There is the bell again!...  I get
+up slowly from my seat at the fire, with my shoulders still bent
+from stooping over it, and go to the door myself.  Whom do I see at
+the threshold?  It is not a dripping love, and I am not an old
+Anacreon; but it is a very pretty little boy of about ten years old.
+He is alone; he raises his face to look at me.  His cheeks are
+blushing; but his little pert nose gives one an idea of mischievous
+pleasantry.  He has feathers in his cap, and a great lace-ruff on
+his jacket.  The pretty little fellow!  He holds in both arms a
+bundle as big as himself, and asks me if I am Monsieur Sylvestre
+Bonnard.  I tell him yes; he gives me the bundle, tells me his mamma
+sent it to me, and then he runs downstairs.
+
+I go down a few steps; I lean over the balustrade, and see the little
+cap whirling down the spiral of the stairway like a feather in the
+wind.  "Good-bye, my little boy!"  I should have liked so much to
+question him.  But what, after all, could I have asked?  It is not
+polite to question children.  Besides, the package itself will
+probably give me more information than the messenger could.
+
+It is a very big bundle, but not very heavy.  I take it into my
+library, and there untie the ribbons and unfasten the paper wrappings;
+and I see--what? a log! a first-class log! a real Christmas log, but
+so light that I know it must be hollow.  Then I find that it is
+indeed composed of two separate pieces, opening on hinges, and
+fastened with hooks.  I slip the hooks back, and find myself inundated
+with violets!  Violets! they pour over my table, over my knees, over
+the carpet.  They tumble into my vest, into my sleeves.  I am all
+perfumed with them.
+
+"Therese!  Therese! fill me some vases with water, and bring them
+here, quick!  Here are violets sent to us I know not from what country
+nor by what hand; but it must be from a perfumed country, and by a
+very gracious hand....  Do you hear me, old crow?"
+
+I have put all the violets on my table--now completely covered by the
+odorous mass.  But there is still something in the log...a book--a
+manuscript.  It is...I cannot believe it, and yet I cannot doubt
+it....  It is the "Legende Doree"!--It is the manuscript of the Clerk
+Alexander!  Here is the "Purification of the Virgin" and the
+"Coronation of Proserpine";--here is the legend of Saint Droctoveus.
+I contemplate this violet-perfumed relic.  I turn the leaves of it--
+between which the dark rich blossoms have slipped in here and there;
+and, right opposite the legend of Saint-Cecilia, I find a card
+bearing this name:
+
+"Princess Trepof."
+
+Princess Trepof!--you who laughed and wept by turns so sweetly under
+the fair sky of Agrigentum!--you, whom a cross old man believed to be
+only a foolish little woman!--to-day I am convinced of your rare and
+beautiful folly; and the old fellow whom you now overwhelm with
+happiness will go to kiss your hand, and give you back, in another
+form, this precious manuscript, of which both he and science owe you
+an exact and sumptuous publication!
+
+Therese entered my study just at that moment; she seemed to be very
+much excited.
+
+"Monsieur!" she cried, "guess whom I saw just now in a carriage, with
+a coat-of-arms painted on it, that was stopping before the door?"
+
+"Parbleu!--Madame Trepof," I exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know anything about any Madame Trepof," answered my
+housekeeper.  "The woman I saw just now was dressed like a duchess,
+and had a little boy with her, with lace-frills all along the seams
+of his clothes.  And it was that same little Madame Coccoz you once
+sent a log to, when she was lying-in here about eleven years ago. 
+I recognized her at once."
+
+"What!" I exclaimed, "you mean to say it was Madame Coccoz, the widow
+of the almanac-peddler?"
+
+"Herself, Monsieur!  The carriage-door was open for a minute to let
+her little boy, who had just come from I don't know where, get in.
+She hasn't changed scarcely at all.  Well, why should those women
+change?--they never worry themselves about anything.  Only the Coccoz
+woman looks a little fatter than she used to be.  And the idea of a
+woman that was taken in here out of pure charity coming to show off
+her velvets and diamonds in a carriage with a crest painted on it!
+Isn't it shameful!"
+
+"Therese!" I cried, in a terrible voice, "if you ever speak to me
+again about that lady except in terms of the deepest respect, you
+and I will fall out!  ...Bring me the Sevres vases to put those
+violets in, which now give the City of Books a charm it never had
+before."
+
+While Therese went off with a sigh to get the Sevres vases, I
+continued to contemplate those beautiful scattered violets, whose
+odour spread all about me like the perfume of some sweet presence,
+some charming soul; and I asked myself how it had been possible for
+me never to recognise Madame Coccoz in the person of the Princess
+Trepof.  But that vision of the young widow, showing me her little
+child on the stairs, had been a very rapid one.  I had much more
+reason to reproach myself for having passed by a gracious and lovely
+soul without knowing it.
+
+"Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts;
+but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life.  That giddy
+little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more
+soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer
+tact than thou didst ever show for anybody's sake.  Right royally
+hath she repaid thee for the log-fire of her churching-day!
+
+"Therese!  Awhile ago you were a magpie; now you are becoming a
+tortoise!  Come and give some water to these Parmese violets."
+
+
+
+
+Part II -- The Daughter of Clementine
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I -- The Fairy
+
+
+When I left the train at the Melun station, night had already spread
+its peace over the silent country.  The soil, heated through all the
+long day by a strong sun--by a "gros soleil," as the harvesters of
+the Val de Vire say--still exhaled a warm heavy smell.  Lush dense
+odours of grass passed over the level of the fields.  I brushed
+away the dust of the railway carriage, and joyfully inhaled the pure
+air.  My travelling-bag--filled by my housekeeper wit linen and
+various small toilet articles, munditiis, seemed so light in my
+hand that I swung it about just as a schoolboy swings his strapped
+package of rudimentary books when the class is let out.
+
+Would to Heaven that I were again a little urchin at school!  But it
+is fully fifty years since my good dead mother made me some tartines
+of bread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she
+slipped the handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to
+the school kept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Passage du
+Commerce well known to the sparrows, between a court and a garden.
+The enormous Monsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted
+my cheek to show, no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first
+appearance had inspired.  But when my mother had passed out of the
+court, startling the sparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased
+to smile--he showed no more affectionate interest; he appeared, on
+the contrary, to consider me as a very troublesome little fellow.
+I discovered, later on, that he entertained the same feelings
+towards all his pupils.  He distributed whacks of his ferule with
+an agility no one could have expected on the part of so corpulent
+a person.  But his first aspect of tender interest invariably
+reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in our presence; and
+always at such times, while warmly praising our remarkable aptitudes,
+he would cast down upon us a look of intense affection.  Still,
+those were happy days which I passed on the benches of the Monsieur
+Couloir with my little playfellows, who, like myself, cried and
+laughed by turns with all their might, from morning till evening.
+
+After a whole half-century these souvenirs float up again, fresh and
+bright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky,
+whose face has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and
+immutable lights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as
+I was slowly turn into grey-headed servants, afflicted with catarrh.
+
+Stars, who have shown down upon each wise or foolish head among all
+my forgotten ancestors, it is under your soft light that I now feel
+stir within me a certain poignant regret!  I would that I could have
+a son who might be able to see you when I shall see you no more.
+How I should love him!  Ah! such a son would--what am I saying?--
+why, he would be no just twenty years old if you had only been
+willing, Clementine--you whose cheeks used to look so ruddy under
+your pink hood!  But you are married to that young bank clerk,
+Noel Alexandre, who made so many millions afterwards!  I never met
+you again after your marriage, Clementine, but I can see you now,
+with your bright curls and your pink hood.
+
+A looking-glass! a looking-glass! a looking-glass!  Really, it would
+be curious to see what I look like now, with my white hair, sighing
+Clementine's name to the stars!  Still, it is not right to end with
+sterile irony the thought begun in the spirit of faith and love.  No,
+Clementine, if your name came to my lips by chance this beautiful
+night, be it for ever blessed, your dear name! and may you ever, as
+a happy mother, a happy grandmother, enjoy to the very end of life
+with your rich husband the utmost degree of that happiness which
+you had the right to believe you could not win with the poor young
+scholar who loved you!  If--though I cannot even now imagine it--if
+your beautiful hair has become white, Clementine, bear worthily the
+bundle of keys confided to you by Noel Alexandre, and impart to your
+grandchildren the knowledge of all domestic virtues!
+
+Ah! beautiful Night!  She rules, with such noble repose, over men and
+animals alike, kindly loosed by her from the yoke of daily toil;
+and even I feel her beneficent influence, although my habits of
+sixty years have so changed me that I can feel most things only
+through the signs which represent them.  My world is wholly formed
+of words--so much of a philologist I have become!  Each one dreams
+the dream of life in his own way.  I have dreamed it in my library;
+and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may
+it please God to take me from my ladder--from before my shelves of
+books!...
+
+"Well, well! it is really himself, pardieu!  How are you, Monsieur
+Sylvestre Bonnard?  And where have you been travelling to all this
+time, over the country, while I was waiting for you at the station
+with my cabriolet?  You missed me when the train came in, and I was
+driving back, quite disappointed, to Lusance.  Give me your valise,
+and get up here beside me in the carriage.  Why, do you know it is
+fully seven kilometres from here to the chateau?"
+
+Who addresses me thus, at the very top of his voice from the height
+of his cabriolet?  Monsieur Paul de Gabry, nephew and heir of
+Monsieur Honore de Gabry, peer of France in 1842, who recently died
+at Monaco.  And it was precisely to Monsieur Paul de Gabry's house
+that I was going with that valise of mine, so carefully strapped by
+my housekeeper.  This excellent young man has just inherited,
+conjointly with his two brothers-in-law, the property of his uncle,
+who, belonging to a very ancient family of distinguished lawyers,
+had accumulated in his chateau at Lusance a library rich in MSS.,
+some dating back to the fourteenth century.  It was for the purpose
+of making an inventory and catalogue of these MSS. that I had come
+to Lusance at the urgent request of Monsieur Paul de Gabry, whose
+father, a perfect gentleman and distinguished bibliophile, had
+maintained the most pleasant relations with me during his lifetime.
+To tell the truth, Monsieur Paul has not inherited the fine tastes
+of his father.  Monsieur Paul likes sporting; he is a great authority
+on horses and dogs; and I much fear that of all the sciences capable
+of satisfying or of duping the inexhaustible curiosity of mankind,
+those of the stable and the dog-kennel are the only ones thoroughly
+mastered by him.
+
+I cannot say I was surprised to meet him, since we had made a
+rendezvous; but I acknowledge that I had become so preoccupied with
+my own thoughts that I had forgotten all about the Chateau de
+Lusance and its inhabitants, and that the voice of the gentleman
+calling out to me as I started to follow the country road winding
+away before me--"un bon ruban de queue," as they say--had given me
+quite a start.
+
+I fear my face must have betrayed my incongruous distraction by a
+certain stupid expression which it is apt to assume in most of my
+social transactions.  My valise was pulled up into the carriage,
+and I followed my valise.  My host pleased me by his straightforward
+simplicity.
+
+"I don't know anything myself about your old parchments," he said;
+"but I think you will find some folks to talk to at the house. 
+Besides the cure, who writes books himself, and the doctor, who is a
+very good fellow--although a radical--you will meet somebody able to
+keep your company.  I mean my wife.  She is not a very learned woman,
+but there are few things which she can't divine pretty well.  Then
+I count upon being able to keep you with us long enough to make you
+acquainted with Mademoiselle Jeanne, who has the fingers of a magician
+and the soul of an angel."
+
+"And is this delightfully gifted young lady one of your family?" I
+asked.
+
+"Not at all," replied Monsieur Paul.
+
+"Then she is just a friend of yours?" I persisted, rather stupidly.
+
+"She has lost both her father and mother," answered Monsieur de Gabry,
+keeping his eyes fixed upon the ears of his horse, whose hoofs rang
+loudly over the road blue-tinted by the moonshine.  "Her father
+managed to get us into some very serious trouble; and we did not get
+off with a fright either!"
+
+Then he shook his head, and changed the subject.  He gave me due
+warning of the ruinous condition in which I should find the chateau
+and the park; they had been absolutely deserted for thirty-two years.
+
+I learned from him that Monsieur Honore de Gabry, his uncle, had been
+on very bad terms with some poachers, whom he used to shoot at like
+rabbits.  One of them, a vindictive peasant, who had received a whole
+charge of shot in his face, lay in wait for the Seigneur one evening
+behind the trees of the mall, and very nearly succeeded in killing
+him, for the ball took off the tip of his ear.
+
+"My uncle," Monsieur Paul continued, "tried to discover who had fired
+the shot; but he could not see any one, and he walked back slowly
+to the house.  The day after he called his steward and ordered him
+to close up the manor and the park, and allow no living soul to enter.
+He expressly forbade that anything should be touched, or looked after,
+or any repairs made on the estate during his absence.  He added,
+between his teeth, that he would return at Easter, or Trinity Sunday,
+as they say in the song; and, just as the song has it, Trinity
+Sunday passed without a sign of him.  He died last year at Monaco;
+my brother-in-law and myself were the first to enter the chateau
+after it had been abandoned for thirty-two years.  We found a
+chestnut-tree growing in the middle of the parlour.  As for the park,
+it was useless trying to visit it, because there were no longer any
+paths or alleys."
+
+My companion ceased to speak; and only the regular hoof-beat of the
+trotting horse, and the chirping of insects in the grass, broke the
+silence.  On either hand, the sheaves standing in the fields took,
+in the vague moonlight, the appearance of tall white women kneeling
+down; and I abandoned myself awhile to those wonderful childish
+fancies which the charm of night always suggests.  After driving
+under the heavy shadows of the mall, we turned to the right and
+rolled up a lordly avenue at the end of which the chateau suddenly
+rose into view--a black mass, with turrets en poivriere.  We
+followed a sort of causeway, which gave access to the court-of-honor,
+and which, passing over a moat full of running water, doubtless
+replaced a long-vanished drawbridge.  The loss of that draw-bridge
+must have been, I think, the first of various humiliations to which
+the warlike manor had been subjected ere being reduced to that
+pacific aspect with which it received me.  The stars reflected
+themselves with marvelous clearness in the dark water.  Monsieur
+Paul, like a courteous host, escorted me to my chamber at the very
+top of the building, at the end of a long corridor; and then,
+excusing himself for not presenting me at once to his wife by reason
+of the lateness of the hour, bade me good-night.
+
+My apartment, painted in white and hung with chintz, seemed to keep
+some traces of the elegant gallantry of the eighteenth century.
+A heap of still-glowing ashes--which testified to the pains taken
+to dispel humidity--filled the fireplace, whose marble mantlepiece
+supported a bust of Marie Antoinette in bisuit.  Attached to the
+frame of the tarnished and discoloured mirror, two brass hooks, that
+had once doubtless served the ladies of old-fashioned days to hang
+their chatelaines on, seemed to offer a very opportune means of
+suspending my watch, which I took care to wind up beforehand; for,
+contrary to the opinion of the Thelemites, I hold that man is only
+master of time, which is Life itself, when he has divided it into
+hours, minutes and seconds--that is to say, into parts proportioned
+to the brevity of human existence.
+
+And I thought to myself that life really seems short to us only
+because we measure it irrationally by our own mad hopes.  We have all
+of us, like the old man in the fable, a new wing to add to our
+building.  I want, for example, before I die, to finish my "History
+of the Abbots of Saint-Germain-de-Pres."  The time God allots to
+each one of us is like a precious tissue which we embroider as we
+best know how.  I had begun my woof with all sorts of philological
+illustrations....  So my thoughts wandered on; and at last, as I
+bound my foulard about my head, the notion of Time led me back to
+the past; and for the second time within the same round of the dial
+I thought of you, Clementine--to bless you again in your prosperity,
+if you have any, before blowing out my candle and falling asleep
+amid the chanting of the frogs.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+During breakfast I had many opportunities to appreciate the good
+taste, tact, and intelligence of Madame de Gabry, who told me that
+the chateau had its ghosts, and was especially haunted by the "Lady-
+with-three-wrinkles-in-her-back," a prisoner during her lifetime,
+and thereafter a Soul-in-pain.  I could never describe how much wit
+and animation she gave to this old nurse's tale.  We took out, coffee
+on the terrace, whose balusters, clasped and forcibly torn away from
+their stone coping by a vigorous growth of ivy, remained suspended
+in the grasp of the amorous plant like bewildered Athenian women in
+the arms of ravishing Centaurs.
+
+The chateau, shaped something like a four-wheeled wagon, with a turret
+at each of the four angles, had lost all original character by
+reason of repeated remodellings.  It was merely a fine spacious
+building, nothing more.  It did not appear to me to have suffered
+much damage during its abandonment of thirty-two years.  But when
+Madame de Gabry conducted me into the great salon of the ground-
+floor, I saw that the planking was bulged in and out, the plinths
+rotten, the wainscotings split apart, the paintings of the piers
+turned black and hanging more than half out of their settings.  A
+chestnut-tree, after forcing up the planks of the floor, had grown
+tall under the ceiling, and was reaching out its large-leaved
+branches towards the glassless windows.
+
+This spectacle was not devoid of charm; but I could not look at it
+without anxiety as I remembered that the rich library of Monsieur
+Honore de Gabry, in an adjoining apartment, must have been exposed
+for the same length of time to the same forces of decay.  Yet, as I
+looked at the young chestnut-tree in the salon, I could not but
+admire the magnificent vigour of Nature, and that resistless power
+which forces every germ to develop into life.  On the other hand I
+felt saddened to think that, whatever effort we scholars may make to
+preserve dead things from passing away, we are labouring painfully
+in vain.  Whatever has lived becomes the necessary food of new
+existences.  And the Arab who builds himself a hut out of the marble
+fragments of a Palmyra temple is really more of a philosopher than
+all the guardians of museums at London, Munich, or Paris.
+
+
+August 11.
+
+All day long I have been classifying MSS....  The sun came in through
+the loft uncurtained windows; and, during my reading, often very
+interesting, I could hear the languid bumblebees bump heavily against
+the windows, and the flies intoxicated with light and heat, making
+their wings hum in circles around my head.  So loud became their
+humming about three o'clock that I looked up from the document I was
+reading--a document containing very precious materials for the history
+of Melun in the thirteenth century--to watch the concentric movements
+of those tiny creatures.  "Bestions," Lafontaine calls them:  he
+found this form of the word in the old popular speech, whence also
+the term, tapisserie-a-bestions, applied to figured tapestry.  I
+was compelled to confess that the effect of heat upon the wings of a
+fly is totally different from that it exerts upon the brain of a
+paleographical archivist; for I found it very difficult to think,
+and a rather pleasant languor weighing upon me, from which I could
+rouse myself only by a very determined effort.  The dinner-bell then
+startled me in the midst of my labours; and I had barely time to put
+on my new dress-coat, so as to make a respectable appearance before
+Madame de Gabry.
+
+The repast, generously served, seemed to prolong itself for my
+benefit.  I am more than a fair judge of wine; and my hostess, who
+discovered my knowledge in this regard, was friendly enough to open
+a certain bottle of Chateau-Margaux in my honour.  With deep respect
+I drank of this famous and knightly old wine, which comes from the
+slopes of Bordeaux, and of which the flavour and exhilarating power
+are beyond praise.  The ardour of it spread gently through my veins,
+and filled me with an almost juvenile animation.  Seated beside
+Madame de Gabry on the terrace, in the gloaming which gave a charming
+melancholy to the park, and lent to every object an air of mystery,
+I took pleasure in communicating my impression of the scene to my
+hostess.  I discoursed with a vivacity quite remarkable on the part
+of a man so devoid of imagination as I am.  I described to her
+spontaneously, without quoting from an old texts, the caressing
+melancholy of the evening, and the beauty of that natal earth which
+feeds us, not only with bread and wine, but also with ideas,
+sentiments, and beliefs, and which will at last take us all back to
+her maternal breast again, like so many tired little children at
+the close of a long day.
+
+"Monsieur," said the kind lady, "you see these old towers, those
+trees, that sky; is it not quite natural that the personage of the
+popular tales and folk-songs should have been evoked by such scenes?
+Why, over there is the very path which Little Red Riding-hood
+followed when she went to the woods to pick nuts.  Across this
+changeful and always vapoury sky the fairy chariots used to roll;
+and the north tower might have sheltered under its pointed roof that
+same old spinning woman whose distaff picked the Sleeping Beauty
+in the Wood."
+
+I continued to muse upon her pretty fancies, while Monsieur Paul
+related to me, as he puffed a very strong cigar, the history of some
+suit he had brought against the commune about a water-right.  Madame
+de Gabry, feeling the chill night air, began to shiver under the
+shawl her husband had wrapped about her, and left us to go to her
+room.  I then decided, instead of going to my own, to return to the
+library and continue my examination of the manuscripts.  In spite
+of the protests of Monsieur Paul, I entered what I may call, in
+old-fashioned phrase, "the book-room," and started to work by the
+light of a lamp.
+
+After having read fifteen pages, evidently written by some ignorant
+and careless scribe, for I could scarcely discern their meaning,
+I plunged my hand into the pocket of my coat to get my snuff-box;
+but this movement, usually so natural and almost instinctive, this
+time cost me some effort and even fatigue.  Nevertheless, I got out
+the silver box, and took from it a pinch of the odorous powder, which,
+somehow or other, I managed to spill all over my shirt-bosom under
+my baffled nose.  I am sure my nose must have expressed its
+disappointment, for it is a very expressive nose.  More than once it
+has betrayed my secret thoughts, and especially upon a certain
+occasion at the public library of Coutances, where I discovered,
+right in front of my colleague Brioux, the "Cartulary of Notre-
+Dame-des-Anges."
+
+What a delight!  My little eyes remained as dull and expressionless
+as ever behind my spectacles.  But at the mere sight of my thick pug-
+nose, which quivered with joy and pride, Brioux knew that I had
+found something.  He noted the volume I was looking at, observed the
+place where I put it back, pounced upon it as soon as I turned my
+heel, copied it secretly, and published in haste, for the sake of
+playing me a trick.  But his edition swarms with errors, and I had
+the satisfaction of afterwards criticising some of the gross blunders
+he made.
+
+But to come back to the point at which I left off:  I began to suspect
+that I was getting very sleepy indeed.  I was looking at a chart of
+which the interest may be divined from the fact that it contained
+mention of a hutch sold to Jehan d'Estonville, priest, in 1312.  But
+although, even then, I could recognise the importance of the document,
+I did not give it that attention it so strongly invited.  My eyes
+would keep turning, against my will, towards a certain corner of the
+table where there was nothing whatever interesting to a learned mind.
+There was only a big German book there, bound in pigskin, with brass
+studs on the sides, and very thick cording upon the back.  It was a
+find copy of a compilation which has little to recommend it except
+the wood engravings it contains, and which is known as the
+"Cosmography of Munster."  This volume, with its covers slightly open,
+was placed upon edge with the back upwards.
+
+I could not say for how long I had been staring causelessly at the
+sixteenth-century folio, when my eyes were captivated by a sight so
+extraordinary that even a person as devoid of imagination as I could
+not but have been greatly astonished by it.
+
+I perceived, all of a sudden, without having noticed her coming into
+the room, a little creature seated on the back of the book, with one
+knee bent and one leg hanging down--somewhat in the attitude of the
+amazons of Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne on horseback.  She was
+so small that her swinging foot did not reach the table, over which
+the trail of her dress extended in a serpentine line.  But her face
+and figure were those of an adult.  The fulness of her corsage and
+the roundness of her waist could leave no doubt of that, even for
+an old savant like myself.  I will venture to add that she was
+very handsome, with a proud mien; for my iconographic studies have
+long accustomed me to recognise at once the perfection of a type and
+the character of a physiognomy.  The countenance of this lady who
+had seated herself inopportunely on the back of "Cosmography of
+Munster" expressed a mingling of haughtiness and mischievousness.
+She had the air of a queen, but a capricious queen; and I judged,
+from the mere expression of her eyes, that she was accustomed to
+wield great authority somewhere, in a very whimsical manner.  Her
+mouth was imperious and mocking, and those blue eyes of hers seemed
+to laugh in a disquieting way under her finely arched black eyebrows.
+I have always heard that black eyebrows are very becoming to blondes;
+but this lady was very blonde.  On the whole, the impression she gave
+me was one of greatness.
+
+It may seem odd to say that a person who was no taller than a wine-
+bottle, and who might have been hidden in my coat pocket--but that
+it would have been very disrespectful to put her in it--gave me
+precisely an idea of greatness.  But in the fine proportions of the
+lady seated upon the "Cosmography of Munster" there was such a proud
+elegance, such a harmonious majesty, and she maintained an attitude
+at once so easy and so noble, that she really seemed to me a very
+great person.  Although my ink-bottle, which she examined with an
+expression of such mockery as appeared to indicate that she knew in
+advance every word that would come out of it at the end of my pen,
+was for her a deep basin in which she would have blackened her gold-
+clocked pink stockings up to the garter, I can assure you that she
+was great, and imposing even in her sprightliness.
+
+Her costume, worthy of her face, was extremely magnificent; it
+consisted of a robe of gold-and-silver brocade, and a mantle of
+nacarat velvet, lined with vair.  Her head-dress was a sort of
+hennin, with two high points; and pearls of splendid lustre made
+it bright and luminous as a crescent moon.  Her little white hand
+held a wand.  That wand drew my attention very strongly, because my
+archaeological studies had taught me to recognise with certainty
+every sign by which the notable personages of legend and of history
+are distinguished.  This knowledge came to my aid during various
+very queer conjectures with which I was labouring.  I examined the
+wand, and saw that it appeared to have been cut from a branch of
+hazel.
+
+"Then its a fairy's wand," I said to myself; "consequently the lady
+who carries it is a fairy."
+
+Happy at thus discovering what sort of a person was before me, I tried
+to collect my mind sufficiently to make her a graceful compliment.
+It would have given me much satisfaction, I confess, if I could have
+talked to her about the part taken by her people, not less in the
+life of the Saxon and Germanic races, than in that of the Latin
+Occident.  Such a dissertation, it appeared to me, would have been
+an ingenious method of thanking the lady for having thus appeared to
+an old scholar, contrary to the invariable custom of her kindred,
+who never show themselves but to innocent children or ignorant
+village-folk.
+
+Because one happens to be a fairy, one is none the less a woman, I
+said to myself; and since Madame Recamier, according to what I heard
+J. J. Ampere say, used to blush with pleasure when the little chimney-
+sweeps opened their eyes as wide as they could to look at her, surely
+the supernatural lady seated upon the "Cosmography of Munster" might
+feel flattered to hear an erudite man discourse learnedly about her,
+as about a medal, a seal, a fibula, or a token.  But such an
+undertaking, which would have cost my timidity a great deal, became
+totally out of the question when I observed the Lady of the
+Cosmography suddenly take from an alms purse hanging at her girdle
+the very smallest of nuts I had ever seen, crack the shells between
+her teeth, and throw them at my nose, while she nibbled the kernels
+with the gravity of a sucking child.
+
+At this conjuncture, I did what the dignity of science demanded of
+me--I remained silent.  But the nut-shells caused such a painful
+tickling that I put up my hand to my nose, and found, to my great
+surprise, that my spectacles were straddling the very end of it--
+so that I was actually looking at the lady, not through my spectacles,
+but over them.  This was incomprehensible, because my eyes, worn out
+over old texts, cannot ordinarily distinguish anything without
+glasses--could not tell a melon from a decanter, though the two were
+placed close up to my nose.
+
+That nose of mine, remarkable for its size, its shape, and its
+coloration, legitimately attracted the attention of the fairy; for
+she seized my goose-quill pen, which was sticking up from the ink-
+bottle like a plume, and she began to pass the feather-end of that
+pen over my nose.  I had had more than once, in company, occasion
+to suffer cheerfully from the innocent mischief of young ladies,
+who made me join their games, and would offer me their cheeks to
+kiss through the back of a chair, or invite me to blow out a candle
+which they would lift suddenly above the range of my breath.  But
+until that moment no person of the fair sex had ever subjected me to
+such a whimsical piece of familiarity as that of tickling my nose
+with my own feather pen.  Happily I remembered the maxim of my late
+grandfather, who was accustomed to say that everything was permissible
+on the part of ladies, and that whatever they do to us is to be
+regarded as a grace and a favour.  Therefore, as a grace and a favour
+I received the nutshells and the titillations with my own pen, and
+I tried to smile.  Much more!--I even found speech.
+
+"Madame," I said, with dignified politeness, "you accord the honour
+of a visit not to a silly child, not to a boor, but to a bibliophile
+who is very happy to make your acquaintance, and who knows that long
+ago you used to make elf-knots in the manes of mares at the crib,
+drink the milk from the skimming-pails, slip graines-a-gratter down
+the backs of our great-grandmothers, make the hearth sputter in the
+faces of the old folks, and, in short, fill the house with disorder
+and gaiety.  You can also boast of giving the nicest frights in the
+world to lovers who stayed out in the woods too late of evenings.
+But I thought you had vanished out of existence at least three
+centuries ago.  Can it really be, Madame, that you are still to be
+seen in this age of railways and telegraphs?  My concierge, who used
+to be a nurse in her young days, does not know your story; and my
+little boy-neighbour, whose nose is still wiped for him by his
+bonne, declares that you do not exist."
+
+"What do you yourself think about it?" she cried, in a silvery voice,
+straightening up her royal little figure in a very haughty fashion,
+and whipping the back of the "Cosmography of Munster" as though it
+were a hippogriff.
+
+"I don't really know," I answered rubbing my eyes.
+
+This reply, indicating a deeply scientific scepticism, had the most
+deplorable effect upon my questioner.
+
+"Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard," she said to me, "you are nothing but an
+old pedant.  I always suspected as much.  The smallest little
+ragamuffin who goes along the road with his shirt-tail sticking
+out through a hole in his pantaloons knows more about me than all
+the old spectacled folks in your Institutes and your Academies.  To
+know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.  Nothing exists
+except that which is imagined.  I am imaginary.  That is what it is
+to exist, I should think!  I am dreamed of, and I appear.  Everything
+is only dream; and as nobody ever dreams about you, Sylvestre Bonnard,
+it is YOU who do not exist.  I charm the world; I am everywhere--on
+a moon-beam, in the trembling of a hidden spring, in the moving of
+leaves that murmur, in the white vapours that rise each morning from
+the hollow meadow, in the thickets of pink brier--everywhere!...
+I am seen; I am loved.  There are sighs uttered, weird thrills of
+pleasure felt by those who follow the light print of my feet, as I
+make the dead leaves whisper.  I make the little children smile; I
+give wit to the dullest-minded nurses.  Leaning above the cradles,
+I play, I comfort, I lull to sleep--and you doubt whether I exist!
+Sylvestre Bonnard, your warm coat covers the hide of an ass!"
+
+She ceased speaking; her delicate nostrils swelled with indignation;
+and while I admired, despite my vexation, the heroic anger of this
+little person, hse pushed my pen about in the ink-bottle, backward
+and forward, like an oar, and then suddenly threw it at my nose,
+point first.
+
+I rubbed by face, and felt it all covered with ink.  She had
+disappeared.  My lamp was extinguished.  A ray of moonlight streamed
+down through a window and descended upon the "Cosmography of Munster."
+A strong cool wind, which had arisen very suddenly without my
+knowledge, was blowing my papers, pens, and wafers about.  My table
+was all stained with ink.  I had left my window open during the storm.
+What an imprudence!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+I wrote to my housekeeper, as I promised, that I was safe and sound.
+But I took good care not to tell her that I had caught a cold from
+going to sleep in the library at night with the window open; for the
+good woman would have been as unsparing in her remonstrances to me
+as parliaments to kings.  "At your age, Monsieur," she would have
+been sure to say, "one ought to have more sense."  She is simple
+enough to believe that sense grows with age.  I seem to her an
+exception to this rule.
+
+Not having any similar motive for concealing my experiences from
+Madame de Gabry, I told her all about my vision, which she seemed
+to enjoy very much.
+
+"Why, that was a charming dream of yours," she said; "and one must
+have real genius to dream such a dream."
+
+"Then I am a real genius when I am asleep," I responded.
+
+"When you dream," she replied; "and you are always dreaming."
+
+I know that Madame de Gabry, in making this remark, only wished to
+please me; but that intention alone deserves my utmost gratitude;
+and it is therefore in a spirit of thankfulness and kindliest
+remembrance that I write down her words, which I will read over and
+over again until my dying day, and which will never be read by any
+one save myself.
+
+I passed the next few days in completing the inventory of the
+manuscripts in the Lusance library.  Certain confidential observations
+dropped by Monsieur Paul de Gabry, however, caused me some painful
+surprise, and made me decide to pursue the work after a different
+manner from that in which I had begun it.  From those few words I
+learned that the fortune of Monsieur Honore de Gabry, which had been
+badly managed for many years, and subsequently swept away to a large
+extent through the failure of a banker whose name I do not know,
+had been transmitted to the heirs of the old French nobleman only
+under the form of mortgaged real estate and irrecoverable assets.
+
+Monsieur Paul, by agreement with his joint heirs, had decided to sell
+the library, and I was intrusted with the task of making arrangements
+to have the sale effected upon advantageous terms.  But totally
+ignorant as I was of all the business methods and trade-customs, I
+thought it best to get the advice of a publisher who was one of my
+private friends.  I wrote him at once to come and join me at Lusance;
+and while waiting for his arrival I took my hat and cane and made
+visits to the different churches of the diocese, in several of which
+I knew there were certain mortuary inscriptions to be found which had
+never been correctly copied.
+
+So I left my hosts and departed my pilgrimage.  Exploring the churches
+and the cemeteries every day, visiting the parish priests and the
+village notaries, supping at the public inns with peddlers and cattle-
+dealers, sleeping at night between sheets scented with lavender, I
+passed one whole week in the quiet but profound enjoyment of observing
+the living engaged in their various daily occupations even while I
+was thinking of the dead.  As for the purpose of my researches, I
+made only a few mediocre discoveries, which caused me only a mediocre
+joy, and one therefore salubrious and not at all fatiguing.  I copied
+a few interesting epitaphs; and I added to this little collection a
+few recipes for cooking country dishes, which a certain good priest
+kindly gave me.
+
+With these riches, I returned to Lusance; and I crossed the court-
+of-honour with such secret satisfaction as a bourgeois fells on
+entering his own home.  This was the effect of the kindness of my
+hosts; and the impression I received on crossing their threshold
+proves, better than any reasoning could do, the excellence of their
+hospitality.
+
+I entered the great parlour without meeting anybody; and the young
+chestnut-tree there spreading out its broad leaves seemed to me
+like an old friend.  But the next thing which I saw--on the
+pier-table--caused me such a shock of surprise that I readjusted my
+glasses upon my nose with both hands at once, and then felt myself
+over so as to get at least some superficial proof of my own existence.
+In less than one second there thronged from my mind twenty different
+conjectures--the most rational of which was that I had suddenly
+become crazy.  It seemed to me absolutely impossible that what I was
+looking at could exist; yet it was equally impossible for me not to
+see it as a thing actually existing.  What caused my surprise was
+resting on the pier-table, above which rose a great dull speckled
+mirror.
+
+I saw myself in that mirror; and I can say that I saw for once in my
+life the perfect image of stupefaction.  But I made proper allowance
+for myself; I approved myself for being so stupefied by a really
+stupefying thing.
+
+The object I was thus examining with a degree of astonishment that
+all my reasoning power failed to lessen, obtruded itself on my
+attention though quite motionless.  The persistence and fixity of
+the phenomenon excluded any idea of hallucination.  I am totally
+exempt from all nervous disorders capable of influencing the sense
+of sight.  The cause of such visual disturbance is, I think,
+generally due to stomach trouble; and, thank God!  I have an excellent
+stomach.  Moreover, visual illusions are accompanied with special
+abnormal conditions which impress the victims of hallucination
+themselves, and inspire them with a sort of terror.  Now, I felt
+nothing of this kind; the object which I saw, although seemingly
+impossible in itself, appeared to me under all the natural conditions
+of reality.  I observed that it had three dimensions, and colours,
+and that it cast a shadow.  Ah! how I stared at it!  The water came
+into my eyes so that I had to wipe the glasses of my spectacles.
+
+Finally I found myself obliged to yield to the evidence, and to
+affirm that I had really before my eyes the Fairy, the very same
+Fairy I had been dreaming of in the library a few evenings before.
+It was she, it was her very self, I assure you!  She had the same
+air of child-queen, the same proud supple poise; she held the same
+hazel wand in her hand; she still wore her double-peaked head-dress,
+and the train of her long brocade robe undulated about her little
+feet.  Same face, same figure.  It was she indeed; and to prevent
+any possible doubt of it, she was seated on the back of a huge old-
+fashioned book strongly resembling the "Cosmography of Munster."
+Her immobility but half reassured me; I was really afraid that she
+was going to take some more nuts out of her alms-purse and throw the
+shells at my face.
+
+I was standing there, waving my hands and gaping, when the musical
+and laughing voice of Madame de Gabry suddenly rang in my ears.
+
+"So you are examining your fairy, Monsieur Bonnard!" said my hostess.
+"Well, do you think the resemblance good?"
+
+It was very quickly said; but even while hearing it I had time to
+perceive that my fairy was a statuette in coloured wax, modeled with
+much taste and spirit by some novice hand.  But the phenomenon, even
+thus reduced by a rational explanation, did not cease to excite my
+surprise.  How, and by whom, had the Lady of the Cosmography been
+enabled to assume plastic existence?  That was what remained for me
+to learn.
+
+Turning towards Madame de Gabry, I perceived that she was not alone.
+A young girl dressed in black was standing beside her.  She had
+large intelligent eyes, of a grey as sweet as that of the sky of the
+Isle of France, and at once artless and characteristic in their
+expression.  At the extremities of her rather thin arms were
+fidgeting uneasily two slender hands, supple but slightly red, as it
+becomes the hands of young girls to be.  Sheathed in her closely
+fitting merino robe, she had the slim grace of a young tree; and her
+large mouth bespoke frankness.  I could not describe how much the
+child pleased me at first sight!  She was not beautiful; but the
+three dimples of her cheeks and chin seemed to laugh, and her whole
+person, which revealed the awkwardness of innocence, had something
+in it indescribably good and sincere.
+
+My gaze alternated from the statuette to the young girl; and I saw
+her blush--so frankly and fully!--the crimson passing over her face
+as by waves.
+
+"Well," said my hostess, who had become sufficiently accustomed to
+my distracted moods to put the same question to me twice, "is that
+the very same lady who came in to see you through the window that
+you left open?  She was very saucy, but then you were quite
+imprudent!  Anyhow, do you recognise her?"
+
+"It is her very self," I replied; "I see her now on that pier-table
+precisely as I saw her on the table in the library."
+
+"Then, if that be so," replied Madame de Gabry, "you have to blame
+for it, in the first place, yourself, as a man who, although devoid
+of all imagination, to use your own words, knew how to depict your
+dream in such vivid colours; in the second place, me, who was able
+to remember and repeat faithfully all your dream; and lastly,
+Mademoiselle Jeanne, whom I now introduce to you, for she herself
+modeled that wax figure precisely according to my instructions."
+
+Madame de Gabry had taken the young girl's hand as she spoke; but the
+latter had suddenly broken away from her, and was already running
+through the park with the speed of a bird.
+
+"Little crazy creature!" Madame de Gabry cried after her.  "How can
+one be so shy?  Come back here to be scolded and kissed!"
+
+But it was all of no avail; the frightened child disappeared among
+the shrubbery.  Madame de Gabry seated herself in the only chair
+remaining in the dilapidated parlour.
+
+"I should be much surprised," she said, "If my husband had not
+already spoken to you of Jeanne.  She is a sweet child, and we both
+lover her very much.  Tell me the plain truth; what do you think
+of her statuette?"
+
+I replied that the work was full of good taste and spirit, but that
+it showed some want of study and practice on the author's part;
+otherwise I had been extremely touched to think that those young
+fingers should have thus embroidered an old man's rough sketch of
+fancy, and given form so brilliantly to the dreams of a dotard like
+myself.
+
+"The reason I ask your opinion," replied Madame de Gabry, seriously,
+"is that Jeanne is a poor orphan.  Do you think she could earn her
+living by modelling statuettes like this one?"
+
+"As for that, no!" I replied; "and I think there is no reason to
+regret the fact.  You say the girl is affectionate and sensitive;
+I can well believe you; I could believe it from her face alone.  There
+are excitements in artist-life which impel generous hearts to act
+out of all rule and measure.  This young creature is made to love;
+keep her for the domestic hearth.  There only is real happiness."
+
+"But she has no dowry!" replied Madame de Gabry.
+
+Then, extending her hand to me, she continued:
+
+"You are our friend; I can tell you everything.  The father of this
+child was a banker, and one of our friends.  He went into a colossal
+speculation, and it ruined him.  He survived only a few months after
+his failure, in which, as Paul must have told you, three-fourths of
+my uncle's fortune were lost, and more than half of our own.
+
+"We had made his acquaintance at Manaco, during the winter we passed
+there at my uncle's house.  He had an adventurous disposition, but
+such an engaging manner!  He deceived himself before ever he deceived
+others.  After all, it is in the ability to deceive oneself that the
+greatest talent is shown, is it not?  Well, we were captured--my
+husband, my uncle, and I; and we risked much more than a reasonable
+amount in a very hazardous undertaking.  But, bah! as Paul says,
+since we have no children we need not worry about it.  Besides, we
+have the satisfaction of knowing that the friend in whom we trusted
+was an honest man....  You must know his name, it was so often in
+the papers an on public placards--Noel Alexandre.  His wife was a
+very sweet person.  I knew her only when she was already past her
+prime, with traces of having once been very pretty, and a taste for
+fashionable style and display which seemed quite becoming to her.
+She was naturally fond of social excitement; but she showed a great
+deal of courage and dignity after the death of her husband.  She
+died a year after him, leaving Jeanne alone in the world."
+
+"Clementine!" I cried out.
+
+And on thus learning what I had never imagined--the mere idea of which
+would have set all the forces of my soul in revolt--upon hearing
+that Clementine was no longer in this world, something like a great
+silence came upon me; and the feeling which flooded my whole being
+was not a keen, strong pain, but a quiet and solemn sorrow.  Yet I
+was conscious of some incomprehensible sense of alleviation, and my
+thought rose suddenly to heights before unknown.
+
+"From wheresoever thou art at this moment, Clementine," I said to
+myself, "look down upon this old heart now indeed cooled by age, yet
+whose blood once boiled for thy sake, and say whether it is not
+reanimated by the mere thought of being able to love all that remains
+of thee on earth.  Everything passes away since thou thyself hast
+passed away; but Life is immortal; it is that Life we must love in
+its forms eternally renewed.  All the rest is child's play; and I
+myself, with all my books, am only like a child playing with marbles.
+The purpose of life--it is thou, Clementine, who has revealed it to
+me!"...
+
+Madame de Gabry aroused me from my thoughts by murmuring,
+
+"The child is poor."
+
+"The daughter of Clementine is poor!"  I exclaimed aloud; "how
+fortunate that is so!  I would not whish that any one by myself
+should proved for her and dower her!  No! the daughter of Clementine
+must not have her dowry from any one but me."
+
+And, approaching Madame de Gabry as she rose from her chair, I took
+her right hand; I kissed that hand, and placed it on my arm, and
+said:
+
+"You will conduct me to the grave of the widow of Noel Alexandre."
+
+And I heard Madame de Gabry asking me:
+
+"Why are you crying?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV -- The Little Saint-George
+
+
+April 16.
+
+
+Saint Drocoveus and the early abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres have
+been occupying me for the past forty years; but I do not know if I
+shall be able to write their history before I go to join them.  It
+is already quite a long time since I became an old man.  One day
+last year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow members at the
+Institute was lamenting before me over the ennui of becoming old.
+
+"Still," Saint-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has
+yet been found of living a long time."
+
+I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth.  The trouble
+of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about
+him pass away--mother, wife, friends, children.  Nature makes and
+unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and
+at last we find that we have not loved, we have only been embracing
+shadows.  But how sweet some shadows are!  If ever creature glided
+like a shadow through the life of a man, it was certainly that
+young girl whom I fell in love with when--incredible though it
+now seems--I was myself a youth.
+
+A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula
+of imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned
+with time.  It says: "Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre,
+may he die the last of his own people!"  In my capacity of
+archaeologist, I have opened tombs and disturbed ashes in order to
+collect the shreds of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were
+mingled with those ashes.  But I did it only through that scientific
+curiosity which does not exclude feelings of reverence and of piety.
+May that malediction graven by some one of the first followers of
+the apostles upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me!  I ought not
+to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the
+world; for there are always some whom one can love.
+
+But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with
+age, like all the other energies of man.  Example proves it; and
+it is this which terrifies me.  Am I sure that I have not myself
+already suffered this great loss?  I should surely have felt it,
+but for the happy meeting which has rejuvenated me.  Poets speak of
+the Fountain of Youth; it does exist; it gushes up from the earth
+at every step we take.  And one passes by without drinking of it!
+
+The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed,
+all grey-haired, into the eternal rest.  I have found her daughter--
+so that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now
+once more finds a purpose and a reason for being.
+
+To-day I "take the sun," as they say in Provence; I take it on the
+terrace of the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite
+de Navarre.  It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine.  I sit
+and dream.  My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a
+bottle of beer.  They are light, and their fizzing amuses me.  I
+dream; such a pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who
+has published thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the 'Journal
+des Savants' for  twenty-six years.  I have the satisfaction of
+feeling that I performed my task as well as it was possible for me
+to do, and that I utilised to their fullest extent those mediocre
+faculties with which Nature endowed me.  My efforts were not all in
+vain, and I have contributed, in my own modest way, to that
+renaissance of historical labours which will remain the honour of
+this restless century.  I shall certainly be counted among those ten
+or twelve who revealed to France her own literary antiquities.  My
+publication of the poetical works of Gautier de Coincy inaugurated
+a judicious system and fixed a date.  It is in the austere calm of
+old age that I decree to myself this deserved credit, and God, who
+sees my heart, knows whether pride or vanity have aught to do with
+this self-award of justice.
+
+But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an
+image of myself in those old me of Homer, whose weakness excluded
+them from the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up
+their voices like crickets among the leaves.
+
+So my thoughts were wandering when three young men seated themselves
+near me.  I do not know whether each one of them had come in three
+boats, like the monkey of Lafontaine, but the three certainly
+displayed themselves over the space of twelve chairs.  I took pleasure
+in watching them, not because they had anything very extraordinary
+about them, but because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner
+which is natural to youth.  They were from the schools.  I was less
+assured of it by the books they were carrying than by the character
+of their physiognomy.  For all who busy themselves with the things
+of the mind can be at once recognised by an indescribably something
+which is common to all of them.  I am very fond of young people;
+and these pleased me, in spite of a certain provoking wild manner
+which recalled to me my own college days with marvellous vividness.
+But they did not wear velvet doublets and long hair, as we used to
+do; they did not walk about, as we used to do, "Hell and malediction!"
+They were quite properly dressed, and neither their costume nor their
+language had anything suggestive of the Middle Ages.  I must also
+add that they paid considerable attention to the women passing on the
+terrace, and expressed their admiration of some of them in very
+animated language.  But their reflections, even on this subject,
+were not of a character to oblige me to flee from my seat.  Besides,
+so long as youth is studious, I think it has a right to its gaieties.
+
+One of them, having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the
+smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon
+accent,
+
+"What a thing to say!  Only physiologists like us have any right to
+occupy ourselves about living matter.  As for you, Gelis, who only
+live in the past--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers--
+you will do better to confine yourself to those stone women over
+there, who are your contemporaries."
+
+And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which
+towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the
+terrace.  This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know
+that the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des
+Chartes.  From the conversation which followed I was able to learn
+that his neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn
+and sarcastic was Boulmier, a fellow student.  Gelis and the future
+doctor (I hope he will become one some day) discoursed together
+with much fantasy and spirit.  In the midst of the loftiest
+speculations they would play upon words, and make jokes after the
+peculiar fashion of really witty persons--that is to say, in a style
+of enormous absurdity.  I need hardly say, I suppose, that they only
+deigned to maintain the most monstrous kind of paradoxes.  They
+employed all their powers of imagination to make themselves as
+ludicrous as possible, and all their powers of reasoning to assert
+the contrary of common sense.  All the better for them!  I do not
+like to see young folks too rational.
+
+The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that
+Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed,
+
+"What!--you read Michelet--you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Boulmier, very gravely.  "I like novels."
+
+Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures,
+and ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and
+said,
+
+"Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional tenderness.  He
+wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man introduced la
+paperasserie into the September massacres.  But as emotional
+tenderness leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against
+the victims.  There was no help for it.  It is the sentimentality of
+the age.  The assassin is pitied, but the victim is considered quite
+unpardonable.  In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than
+ever before.  There is no common sense in it; it is simply wonderful!
+Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies
+and fainting-spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never
+deigns to explain.  Childish outcries--envies de femme grosse!--and
+a style, my friends!--not a single finished phrase!  It is
+astounding!"
+
+And he handed the book back to his comrade.  "This is amusing
+madness," I thought to myself, "and not quite so devoid of common
+sense as it appears.  This young man, though only playing has sharply
+touched the defect in the cuirass."
+
+But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly
+despicable exercise of rhetoric.  According to him, the only true
+history was the natural history of man.  Michelet was in the right
+path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he
+fell back into the old rut almost immediately afterwards.
+
+After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist
+went to join a party of passing friends.  The two archivists, less
+well acquainted in the neighbourhood of a garden so far from the
+Rue Paradis-au-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about
+their studies.  Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was
+preparing a thesis on the subject of which he expatiated with
+youthful enthusiasm.  Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one,
+particularly because I had recently thought myself called upon to
+treat a notable part of it.  It was the Monasticon Gallicanum.
+The young erudite (I give him the name as a presage) wanted to
+describe all the engravings made about 1690 for the work which Dom
+Michel Germain would have had printed but for the one irremediable
+hindrance which is rarely foreseen and never avoided.  Dom Michel
+Germain would have had printed but for the one irremediable hindrance
+which is rarely foreseen and never avoided.  Dom Michel Germain left
+his manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died.
+Shall I be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present
+question.  So far as I am able to understand, Monsieur Gelis intends
+to devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys
+pictured by the humble engravers of Dom Michel Germain.
+
+His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the
+manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject.  It was
+then that I pricked up my ears.  They spoke at first of original
+sources; and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory manner,
+despite their innumerable and detestable puns.  Then they began to
+speak about contemporary studies on the subject.
+
+"Have you read," asked Boulmier, "the notice of Courajod?"
+
+"Good!" I thought to myself.
+
+"Yes," replied Gelis; "it is accurate."
+
+"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the article of Tamisey de Larroque
+in the 'Revue des Questions Historiques'?"
+
+"Good!" I thought to myself, for the second time.
+
+"Yes," replied Gelis, "it is full of things."...
+
+"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the 'Tableau des Abbayes
+Benedictines en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard?"
+
+"Good!" I said to myself, for the third time.
+
+"Mai foi! no!" replied Gelis.  "Bonnard is an idiot!"  Turning my
+head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was
+sitting.  It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool
+I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting
+rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those two young
+fellows!
+
+"Well! well!" I said to myself as I got up.  "Let this prattling
+fledgling write his thesis and sustain it!  He will find my colleague,
+Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what
+an ignoramus he is.  I consider him neither more nor less than a
+rascal; and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said
+about Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous!  To
+talk in that way about an old master replete with genius!  It was
+simply abominable!"
+
+
+April 17.
+
+
+"Therese, give me my new hat, my best frock-coat, and my silver-
+headed cane."
+
+But Therese is deaf as a sack of charcoal and slow as Justice.
+Years have made her so.  The worst is that she thinks she can hear
+well and move about well; and, proud of her sixty years of upright
+domesticity, she serves her old master with the most vigilant
+despotism.
+
+"What did I tell you?" ...And now she will not give me my silver-
+headed cane, for fear that I might lose it!  It is true that I often
+forget umbrellas and walking-sticks in the omnibuses and booksellers'
+shops.  But I have a special reason for wanting to take out with me
+to-day my old cane with the engraved silver head representing Don
+Quixote charging a windmill, lance in rest, while Sancho Panza,
+with uplifted arms, vainly conjures him to a stop.  That cane is
+all that came to me from the heritage of my uncle, Captain Victor,
+who in his lifetime resembled Don Quixote much more than Sancho
+Panza, and who loved blows quite as much as most people fear them.
+
+For thirty years I have been in the habit of carrying this cane
+upon all memorable or solemn visits which I make; and those two
+figures of knight and squire give me inspiration and counsel.  I
+imagine I can hear them speak.  Don Quixote says,
+
+"Think well about great things; and know that thought is the only
+reality in this world.  Lift up Nature to thine own stature; and
+let the whole universe be for thee no more than the reflection of
+thine own heroic soul.  Combat for honour's sake:  that alone is
+worthy of a man! and if it should fall thee to receive wounds,
+shed thy blood as a beneficent dew, and smile."
+
+And Sancho Panza says to me in his turn,
+
+"Remain just what heaven made thee, comrade!  Prefer the bread-crust
+which has become dry in thy wallet to all the partridges that roast
+in the kitchen of lords.  Obey thy master, whether he by a wise man
+or a fool, and do not cumber thy brain with too many useless things.
+Fear blows; 'tis verily tempting God to seek after danger!"
+
+But if the incomparable knight and his matchless squire are imagined
+only upon this cane of mine, they are realities to my inner
+conscience.  Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote
+and a Sancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho
+most persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged
+to admire....  But a truce to this dotage!--and let us go to see
+Madame de Gabry about some matters more important than the everyday
+details of life....
+
+
+Same day.
+
+
+I found Madame de Gabry dressed in black, just buttoning her gloves.
+
+"I am ready," she said.
+
+Ready!--so I have always found her upon any occasion of doing a
+kindness.
+
+After some compliments about the good health of her husband, who was
+taking a walk at the time, we descended the stairs and got into the
+carriage.
+
+I do not know what secret influence I feared to dissipate by breaking
+silence, but we followed the great deserted drives without speaking,
+looking at the crosses, the monumental columns, and the mortuary
+wreaths awaiting sad purchasers.
+
+The vehicle at last halted at the extreme verge of the land of the
+living, before the gate upon which words of hope are graven.
+
+"Follow me," said Madame de Gabry, whose tall stature I noticed then
+for the first time.  She first walked down an alley of cypresses,
+and then took a very narrow path contrived between the tombs.
+Finally, halting before a plain slab, she said to me,
+
+"It is here."
+
+And she knelt down.  I could not help noticing the beautiful and
+easy manner in which this Christian woman fell upon her knees,
+leaving the folds of her robe to spread themselves at random about
+her.  I had never before seen any lady kneel down with such frankness
+and such forgetfulness of self, except two fair Polish exiles, one
+evening long ago, in a deserted church in Paris.
+
+This image passed like a flash; and I saw only the sloping stone
+on which was graven the name of Clementine.  What I then felt was
+something so deep and vague that only the sound of some rich music
+could convey the idea of it.  I seemed to hear instruments of
+celestial sweetness make harmony in my old heart.  With the solemn
+accords of a funeral chant there seemed to mingle the subdued
+melody of a song of love; for my soul blended into one feeling the
+grave sadness of the present with the familiar graces of the past.
+
+I cannot tell whether we had remained a long time at the tomb of
+Clementine before Madame de Gabry arose.  We passed through the
+cemetery again without speaking to each other.  Only when we found
+ourselves among the living once more did I feel able to speak.
+
+"While following you there," I said to Madame de Gabry, "I could
+not help thinking of those angels with whom we are said to meet on
+the mysterious confines of life and death.  That tomb you led me
+to, of which I knew nothing--as I know nothing, or scarcely
+anything, concerning her whom it covers--brought back to me emotions
+which were unique in my life, and which seem in the dullness of that
+life like some light gleaming upon a dark road.  The light recedes
+farther and farther away as the journey lengthens; I have now almost
+reached the bottom of the last slope; and, nevertheless, each time
+I turn to look back I see the glow as bright as ever.
+
+"You, Madame, who knew Clementine as a young wife and mother after
+her hair had become grey, you cannot imagine her as I see her still;
+a young fair girl, all pink and white.  Since you have been so kind
+as to be my guide, dear Madame, I ought to tell you what feelings
+were awakened in me by the sight of that grave to which you led me.
+Memories throng back upon me.  I feel myself like some old gnarled
+and mossy oak which awakens a nestling world of birds by shaking
+its branches.  Unfortunately the song my birds sing is old as the
+world, and can amuse no one but myself."
+
+"Tell me your souvenirs," said Madame de Gabry.  "I cannot read your
+books, because they are written only for scholars; but I like very
+much to have you talk to me, because you know how to give interest
+to the most ordinary things in life.  And talk to me just as you
+would talk to an old woman.  This morning I found three grey threads
+in my hair."
+
+"Let them come without regret, Madame," I replied.  "Time deals
+gently only with those who take it gently.  And when in some years
+more you will have a silvery fringe under your black fillet, you
+will be reclothed with a new beauty, less vivid but more touching
+than the first; and you will find your husband admiring your grey
+tresses as much as he did that black curl which you gave him when
+about to be married, and which he preserves in a locket as a thing
+sacred....  These boulevards are broad and very quiet.  We can talk
+at our ease as we walk along.  I will tell you, to begin with, how
+I first made the acquaintance of Clementine's father.  But you must
+not expect anything extraordinary, or anything even remarkable; you
+would be greatly deceived.
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay used to live in the second storey of an old house
+in the Avenue de l'Observatoire, having a stuccoed front, ornamented
+with antique busts, and a large unkept garden attached to it.  That
+facade and that garden were the first images my child-eyes perceived;
+and they will be the last, no doubt, which I still see through my
+closed eyelids when the Inevitable Day comes.  For it was in that
+house that I was born; it was in that garden I first learned, while
+playing, to feel and know some particles of this old universe. 
+Magical hours!--sacred hours!--when the soul, all fresh from the
+making, first discoveries the world, which for its sake seems to
+assume such caressing brightness, such mysterious charm!  And that,
+Madame, is indeed because the universe itself is only the reflection
+of our soul.
+
+"My mother was being very happily constituted.  She rose with the
+sun, like the birds; and she herself resembled the birds by her
+domestic industry, by her maternal instinct, by her perpetual desire
+to sing, and by a sort of brusque grace, which I could feel the
+of very well even as a child.  She was the soul of the house, which
+she filled with her systematic and joyous activity.  My father was
+just as slow as she was brisk.  I can recall very well that placid
+face of his, over which at times an ironical smile used to flit.
+He was fatigued with active life; and he loved his fatigue.  Seated
+beside the fire in his big arm-chair, he used to read from morning
+till night; and it is from him that I inherit my love of books.  I
+have in my library a Mably and a Raynal, which he annotated with
+his own hand from beginning to end.  But it was utterly useless
+attempting to interest him in anything practical whatever.  When
+my mother would try, by all kinds of gracious little ruses, to lure
+him out of his retirement, he would simply shake his head with that
+inexorable gentleness which is the force of weak characters.  He
+used in this way greatly to worry the poor woman, who could not
+enter at all into his own sphere of meditative wisdom, and could
+understand nothing of life except its daily duties and the merry
+labour of each hour.  She thought him sick, and feared he was going
+to become still more so.  But his apathy had a different cause.
+
+"My father, entering the Naval office under Monsieur Decres, in 1801,
+gave early proof of high administrative talent.  There was a great
+deal of activity in the marine department in those times; and in
+1805 my father was appointed chief of the Second Administrative
+Division.  That same year, the Emperor, whose attention had been
+called to him by the Minister, ordered him to make a report upon
+the organisation of the English navy.  This work, which reflected
+a profoundly liberal and philosophic spirit, of which the editor
+himself was unconscious, was only finished in 1807--about eighteen
+months after the defeat of Admiral Villeneuve at Trafalgar.  Napoleon,
+who, from that disastrous day, never wanted to hear the word ship
+mentioned in his presence, angrily glanced over a few pages of the
+memoir, and then threw it in the fire, vociferating, 'Words!--words!
+I said once before that I hated ideologists.'  My father was told
+afterwards that the Emperor's anger was so intense at the moment
+that he stamped the manuscript down into the fire with his boot-
+heels.  At all events, it was his habit, when very much irritated,
+to poke down the fire with his boot-soles.  My father never fully
+recovered from this disgrace; and the fruitlessness of all his
+efforts towards reform was certainly the cause of the apathy which
+came upon him at a later day.  Nevertheless, Napoleon, after his
+return from Elba, sent for him, and ordered him to prepare some
+liberal and patriotic bulletins and proclamations for the fleet.
+After Waterloo, my father, whom the event had rather saddened than
+surprised, retired into private life, and was not interfered with--
+except that it was generally averred of him that he was a Jacobin,
+a buveur-de-sang--one of those men with whom no one could afford
+to be on intimate terms.  My mother's eldest brother, Victor Maldent,
+and infantry captain--retired on half-pay in 1814, and disbanded in
+1815--aggravated by his bad attitude the situation in which the fall
+of the Empire had placed my father.  Captain Victor used to shout
+in the cafes and the public balls that the Bourbons had sold France
+to the Cossacks.  He used to show everybody a tricoloured cockade
+hidden in the lining of his hat; and carried with much ostentation
+a walking-stick, the handle of which had been so carved that the
+shadow thrown by it made the silhouette of the Emperor.
+
+"Unless you have seen certain lithographs by Charlet, Madame, you
+could form no idea of the physiognomy of my Uncle Victor, when he
+used to stride about the garden of the Tuileries with a fiercely
+elegant manner of his own--buttoned up in his frogged coat, with
+his cross-of-honour upon his breast, and a bouquet of violets in
+his button-hole.
+
+"Idleness and intemperance greatly intensified the vulgar recklessness
+of his political passions.  He used to insult people whom he happened
+to see reading the 'Quotidienne,' or the 'Drapeau Blanc,' and
+compel them to fight with him.  In this way he had the pain and
+the shame of wounding a boy of sixteen in a duel.  In short, my
+Uncle Victor was the very reverse of a well-behaved person; and as
+he came to lunch and dine at our house every blessed day in the
+year, his bad reputation became attached to our family.  My poor
+father suffered cruelly from some of his guest's pranks; but being
+very good-natured, he never made any remarks, and continued to give
+the freedom of his house to the captain, who only despised him for
+it.
+
+"All this which I have told you, Madame, was explained to me
+afterwards.  But at the time in question, my uncle the captain filled
+me with the very enthusiasm of admiration, and I promised myself
+to try to become some day as like him as possible.  So one fine
+morning, in order to begin the likeness, I put my arms akimbo, and
+swore like a trooper.  My excellent mother at once gave me such
+a box on the ear that I remained half stupefied for some little
+while before I could even burst out crying.  I can still see the
+old arm-chair, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, behind which I
+wept innumerable tears that day.
+
+"I was a very little fellow then.  One morning my father, lifting
+me upon his knees, as he was in the habit of doing, smiled at me
+with that slightly ironical smile which gave a certain piquancy to
+his perpetual gentleness of manner.  As I sat on his knee, playing
+with his long white hair, he told me something which I did not
+understand very well, but which interested me very much, for the
+simple reason that it was mysterious to me.  I think but am not
+quite sure, that he related to me that morning the story of the
+little King of Yvetot, according to the song.  All of a sudden we
+heard a great report; and the windows rattled.  My father slipped
+me down gently on the floor at his feet; he threw up his trembling
+arms, with a strange gesture; his face became all inert and white,
+and his eyes seemed enormous.  He tried to speak, but his teeth
+were chattering.  At last he murmured, 'They have shot him!'  I
+did not know what he meant, and felt only a vague terror.  I knew
+afterwards, however, that hew was speaking of Marshal Ney, who fell
+on the 7th of December, 1815, under the wall enclosing some waste
+ground beside our house.
+
+"About that time I used often to meet on the stairway an old man
+(or, perhaps, not exactly an old man) with little black eyes which
+flashed with extraordinary vivacity, and an impassive, swarthy face.
+He did not seem to me alive--or at least he did not seem to me alive
+in the same way that other men are alive.  I had once seen, at the
+residence of Monsieur Denon, where my father had taken me with him
+on a visit, a mummy brought from Egypt; and I believed in good faith
+that Monsieur Denon's mummy used to get up when no one was looking,
+leave its gilded case, put on a brown coat and powdered wig, and
+become transformed into Monsieur de Lessay.  And even to-day, dear
+Madame, while I reject that opinion as being without foundation,
+I must confess that Monsier de Lessay bore a very strong resemblance
+to Monsieur Denon's mummy.  The fact is enough to explain why this
+person inspired me with fantastic terror.
+
+"In reality, Monsieur de Lessay was a small gentleman and a great
+philosopher.  As a disciple of Mably and Rousseau, he flattered
+himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension
+itself is a very great prejudice.
+
+"He professed to hate fanaticism, yet was himself a fanatic on the
+topic of toleration.  I am telling you, Madame, about a character
+belonging to an age that is past.  I fear I may not be able to make
+you understand, and I am sure I shall not be able to interest you.
+It was so long ago!  But I will abridge as much as possible: 
+besides, I did not promise you anything interesting; and you could
+not have expected to hear of remarkable adventures in the life of
+Sylvestre Bonnard."
+
+Madame de Gabry encouraged me to proceed, and I resumed:
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay was brusque with men and courteous to ladies.
+He used to kiss the hand of my mother, whom the customs of the
+Republic and the Empire had not habituated to such gallantry.  In
+him, I touched the age of Louis XVI.  Monsieur de Lessay was a
+geographer; and nobody, I believe, ever showed more pride then he
+in occupying himself with the face of the earth.  Under the Old
+Regime he had attempted philosophical agriculture, and thus
+squandered his estates to the very last acre.  When he had ceased
+to own one square foot of ground, he took possession of the whole
+globe, and prepared an extraordinary number of maps, based upon
+the narratives of travellers.  But as he had been mentally nourished
+with the very marrow of the "Encyclopedie," he was not satisfied
+with merely parking off human beings within so many degrees, minutes,
+and seconds of latitude and longitude.  he also occupied himself,
+alas! with the question of their happiness.  It is worthy of remark,
+Madame, that those who have given themselves the most concern about
+the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.
+Monsieur de Lessay, who was more of a geometrician than D'Alembert,
+and more of a philosopher than Jean Jacques, was also more of a
+royalist than Louis XVIII.  But his love for the King was nothing
+to his hate for the Emperor.  He had joined the conspiracy of
+Georges against the First Consul; but in the framing of the
+indictment he was not included among the inculpated parties, having
+been either ignored or despised, and this injury he never could
+forgive Bonaparte, whom he called the Ogre of Corsica, and to whom
+he used to say he would never have confided even the command of
+a regiment, so pitiful a soldier he judged him to be.
+
+"In 1820, Monsieur de Lessay, who had then been a widower for many
+years, married again, at the age of sixty, a very young woman, whom
+he pitilessly kept at work preparing maps for him, and who gave him
+a daughter some years after their marriage, and died in childbed.
+My mother had nursed her during her brief illness, and had taken
+care of the child.  The name of that child was Clementine.
+
+"It was from the time of that birth and that death that the
+relations between our family and Monsieur de Lessay began.  In the
+meanwhile I had been growing dull as I began to leave my true
+childhood behind me.  I had lost the charming power of being
+able to see and feel; and things no longer caused me those delicious
+surprises which form the enchantment of the more tender age.  For
+the same reason, perhaps, I have no distinct remembrance of the
+period following the birth of Clementine; I only know that a few
+months afterwards I had a misfortune, the mere thought of which
+still wrings my heart.  I lost my mother.  A great silence, a great
+coldness, and a great darkness seemed all at once to fill the house.
+
+"I fell into a sort of torpor.  My father sent me to the lycee,
+but I could only arouse myself from my lethargy with the greatest
+of effort.
+
+"Still, I was not altogether a dullard, and my professors were able
+to teach me almost everything they wanted, namely, a little Greek
+and a great deal of Latin.  My acquaintances were confined to the
+ancients.  I learned to esteem Miltiades, and to admire Themistocles.
+I became familiar with Quintus Fabius, as far, at least, as it was
+possible to become familiar with so great a Consul.  Proud of these
+lofty acquaintances, I scarcely ever condescended to notice little
+Clementine and her old father, who, in any event, went away to
+Normandy one fine morning without my having deigned to give a moment's
+thought to their possible return.
+
+"They came back, however, Madame, they came back!  Influences of
+Heaven, forces of nature, all ye mysterious powers which vouchsafe
+to man the ability to love, you know how I again beheld Clementine!
+They re-entered our melancholy home.  Monsieur de Lessay no longer
+wore a wig.  Bald, with a few grey locks about his ruddy temples,
+he had all the aspect of robust old age.  But that divine being whom
+I saw all resplendent, as she leaned upon his arm--she whose
+presence illuminated the old faded parlour--she was not an
+apparition!  It was Clementine herself!  I am speaking the simple
+truth:  her violet eyes seemed to me in that moment supernatural,
+and even to-day I cannot imagine how those two living jewels could
+have endured the fatigues of life, or become subjected to the
+corruption of death.
+
+"She betrayed a little shyness in greeting my father, whom she did
+not remember.  Her complexion was slightly pink, and her half-open
+lips smiled with that smile which makes one think of the Infinite--
+perhaps because it betrays no particular thought, and expresses only
+the joy of living and the bliss of being beautiful.  Under a pink
+hood her face shone like a gem in an open casket; she wore a
+cashmere scarf over a robe of white muslin plaited at the waist,
+from beneath which protruded the tip of a little Morocco shoe....
+Oh! you must not make fun of me, dear Madame, that was the fashion
+of the time; and I do not know whether our new fashions have nearly
+so much simplicity, brightness, and decorous grace.
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay informed us that, in consequence of having
+undertaken the publication of a historical atlas, he had come back
+to live in Paris, and that he would be pleased to occupy his former
+apartment, if it was still vacant.  My father asked Mademoiselle de
+Lessay whether she was pleased to visit the capital.  She appeared
+to be, for her smile blossomed out in reply.  She smiled at the
+windows that looked out upon the green and luminous garden; she
+smiled at the bronze Marius seated among the ruins of Carthage above
+the dial of the clock; she smiled a the old yellow-velveted arm-
+chairs, and at the poor student who was afraid to lift his eyes to
+look at her.  From that day--how I loved her!
+
+"But here we are already a the Rue de Severs, and in a little while
+we shall be in sight of your windows.  I am a very bad story-teller;
+and if I were--by some impossible chance--to take it into my head
+to compose a novel, I know I should never succeed.  I have been
+drawing out to tiresome length a narrative which I must finish
+briefly; for there is a certain delicacy, a certain grace of soul,
+which an old man could not help offending by an complacent
+expatiation upon the sentiments of even the purest love.  Let us
+take a short turn on this boulevard, lined with convents; and my
+recital will be easily finished within the distance separating us
+from that little spire you see over there....
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay, on finding that I had graduated at the Ecole
+des Chartes, judged me worthy to assist him in preparing his
+historical atlas.  The plan was to illustrate, by a series of maps,
+what the old philosopher termed the Vicissitudes of Empires from
+the time of Noah down to that of Charlemagne.  Monsieur de Lessay
+had stored up in his head all the errors of the eighteenth century
+in regard to antiquity.  I belonged, so far as my historical studies
+were concerned, to the new school; and I was just at that age when
+one does not know how to dissemble.  The manner in which the old man
+understood, or, rather, misunderstood, the epoch of the Barbarians--
+his obstinate determination to find in remote antiquity only
+ambitious princes, hypocritical and avaricious prelates, virtuous
+citizens, poet-philosophers, and other personages who never existed
+outside of the novels of Marmontel,--made me dreadfully unhappy,
+and at first used to excite me into attempts at argument,--rational
+enough, but perfectly useless and sometimes dangerous, for Monsieur
+de Lessay was very irascible, and Clementine was very beautiful.
+Between her and him I passed many hours of torment and of delight. 
+I was in love; I was a coward, and I granted to him all that he
+demanded of me in regard to the political and historical aspect which
+the Earth--that was at a later day to bear Clementine--presented
+in the time of Abraham, of Menes, and of Deucalion.
+
+"As fast as we drew our maps, Mademoiselle de Lessay tinted them in
+water-colours.  Bending over the table, she held the brush lightly
+between two fingers; the shadow of her eyelashes descended upon her
+cheeks, and bather her half-closed eyes in a delicious penumbra.
+Sometimes she would lift her head, and I would see her lips pout.
+There was so much expression in her beauty that she could not breathe
+without seeming to sigh; and her most ordinary poses used to throw
+me into the deepest ecstasies of admiration.  Whenever I gazed at her
+I fully agreed with Monsieur de Lessay that Jupiter had once reigned
+as a despot-king over the mountainous regions of Thessaly, and that
+Orpheus had committed the imprudence of leaving the teaching of
+philosophy to the clergy.  I am not now quite sure whether I was a
+coward or a hero when I accorded al this to the obstinate old man.
+
+"Mademoiselle de Lessay, I must acknowledge, paid very little
+attention to me.  But this indifference seemed to me so just and so
+natural that I never even dreamed of thinking I had a right to
+complain about it; it made me unhappy, but without my knowing that
+I was unhappy at the time.  I was hopeful;--we had then only got
+as far as the First Assyrian Empire.
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay came every evening to take coffee with my father.
+I do not know how they became such friends; for it would have been
+difficult to find two characters more oppositely constituted.  My
+father was a man who admired very few things, but was still capable
+of excusing a great many.  Still, as he grew older, he evinced more
+and more dislike of everything in the shape of exaggeration.  He
+clothed his ideas with a thousand delicate shades of expression,
+and never pronounced an opinion without all sorts of reservations.
+These conversational habits, natural to a finely trained mind, used
+greatly to irritate the dry, terse old aristocrat, who was never
+in the least disarmed by the moderation of an adversary--quite the
+contrary!  I always foresaw one danger.  That danger was Bonaparte.
+My father had not himself retained an particular affection for his
+memory; but, having worked under his direction, he did not like to
+hear him abused, especially in favour of the Bourbons, against whom
+he had serious reason to feel resentment.  Monsieur de Lessay, more
+of a Voltairean and a Legitimist than ever, now traced back to
+Bonaparte the origin of every social, political, and religious evil.
+Such being the situation, the idea of Uncle Victor made me feel
+particularly uneasy.  This terrible uncle had become absolutely
+unsufferable now that his sister was no longer there to calm him
+down.  The harp of David was broken, and Saul was wholly delivered
+over to the spirit of madness.  The fall of Charles X. had increased
+the audacity of the old Napoleonic veteran, who uttered all
+imaginable bravadoes.  He no longer frequented our house, which had
+become too silent for him.  But sometimes, at the dinner-hour, we
+would see him suddenly make his appearance, all covered with flowers,
+like a mausoleum.  Ordinarily he would sit down to table with an
+oath, growled out from the very bottom of his chest, and brag,
+between every two mouthfuls, of his good fortune with the ladies as
+a vieux brave.  Then, when the dinner was over, he would fold up
+his napkin in the shape of a bishop's mitre, gulp down half a
+decanter of brandy, and rush away with the hurried air of a man
+terrified at the mere idea of remaining for any length of time,
+without drinking, in conversation with an old philosopher and a
+young scholar.  I felt perfectly sure that, if ever he and Monsieur
+de Lessay should come together, all would be lost.  But that day
+came, Madame!
+
+"The captain was almost hidden by flowers that day, and seemed so
+much like a monument commemorating the glories of the Empire that
+one would have liked to pass a garland of immortelles over each of
+his arms.  He was in an extraordinarily good humour; and the first
+person to profit by that good humour was our cook--for he put his
+arm around her waist while she was placing the roast on the table.
+
+"After dinner he pushed away the decanter presented to him, observing
+that he was going to burn some brandy in his coffee later on.  I
+asked him tremblingly whether he would not prefer to have his coffee
+at once.  He was very suspicious, and not at all dull of
+comprehension--my Uncle Victor.  My precipitation seemed to him in
+very bad taste; for he looked at me in a peculiar way, and said,
+
+"'Patience! my nephew.  It isn't the business of the baby of the
+regiment to sound the retreat!  Devil take it!  You must be in a
+great hurry, Master Pedant, to see if I've got spurs on my boots!'
+
+"It was evident the captain had divined that I wanted him to go.
+And I knew him well enough to be sure that he was going to stay.
+He stayed.  The least circumstances of that evening remain
+impressed on my memory.  My uncle was extremely jovial.  The mere
+idea of being in somebody's way was enough to keep him in good
+humour.  He told us, in regular barrack style, ma foi! a certain
+story about a monk, a trumpet, and five bottles of Chambertin,
+which must have been much enjoyed in the garrison society, but which
+I would not venture to repeat to you, Madame, even if I could
+remember it.  When we passed into the parlour, the captain called
+attention to the bad condition of our andirons, and learnedly
+discoursed on the merits of rotten-stone as a brass-polisher.  Not
+a word on the subject of politics.  He was husbanding his forces.
+Eight o'clock sounded from the ruins of Carthage on the mantlepiece.
+It was Monsieur de Lessay's hour.  A few moments later he entered
+the parlour with his daughter.  The ordinary evening chat began.
+Clementine sat down and began to work on some embroidery beside the
+lamp, whose shade left her pretty head in a soft shadow, and threw
+down upon her fingers a radiance that made them seem almost self-
+luminous.  Monsieur de Lessay spoke of a comet announced by the
+astronomers, and developed some theories in relation to the subject,
+which, however audacious, betrayed at least a certain degree of
+intellectual culture.  My father, who knew a good deal about
+astronomy, advanced some sound ideas of his own, which he ended up
+with his eternal, 'But what do we know about it, after all?'  In
+my turn I cited the opinion of our neighbour of the Observatory--
+the great Arago.  My Uncle Victor declared that comets had a
+peculiar influence on the quality of wines, and related in support
+of this view a jolly tavern-story.  I was so delighted with the
+turn the conversation had taken that I did all in my power to
+maintain it in the same groove, with the help of my most recent
+studies, by a long exposition of the chemical composition of those
+nebulous bodies which, although extending over a length of billions
+of leagues, could be contained in a small bottle.  My father, a
+little surprised at my unusual eloquence, watched me with his
+peculiar, placid, ironical smile.  But one cannot always remain in
+heaven.  I spoke, as I looked at Clementine, of a certain comete
+of diamonds, which I had been admiring in a jeweller's window the
+evening before.  It was a most unfortunate inspiration of mine.
+
+"'Ah! my nephew,' cried Uncle Victor, that "comete" of yours was
+nothing to the one which the Empress Josephine wore in her hair
+when she came to Strasburg to distribute crosses to the army.'
+
+"'That little Josephine was very fond of finery and display,'
+observed Monsieur de Lessay, between two sips of coffee.  'I do
+not blame her for it; she had good qualities, though rather frivolous
+in character.  She was a Tascher, and she conferred a great honour
+on Bonaparte by marrying him.  To say a Tascher does not, of course,
+mean a great deal; but to say a Bonaparte simply means nothing at
+all.'
+
+"'What do you mean by that, Monsieur the Marquis?' demanded Captain
+Victor.
+
+"'I am not a marquis,' dryly responded Monsieur de Lessay; 'and I
+mean simply that Bonaparte would have been very well suited had he
+married one of those cannibal women described by Captain Cook in
+his voyages--naked, tattooed, with a ring in her nose--devouring
+with delight putrefied human flesh.'
+
+"I had foreseen it, and in my anguish (O pitiful human heart!) my
+first idea was about the remarkable exactness of my anticipations.
+I must say that the captain's reply belonged to the sublime order.
+He put his arms akimbo, eyed Monsieur de Lessay contemptuously from
+head to food, and said,
+
+"'Napoleon, Monsieur the Vidame, had another spouse besides Josephine,
+another spouse besides Marie-Louise.  that companion you know nothing
+of; but I have seen her, close to me.  She wears a mantle of azure
+gemmed with stars; she is crowned with laurels; the Cross-of-Honour
+flames upon her breast.  Her name is GLORY!'
+
+"Monsieur de Lessay set his cup on the mantlepiece and quietly
+observed,
+
+"'Your Bonaparte was a blackguard!'
+
+"My father rose up calmly, extended his arm, and said very softly
+to Monsieur de Lessay,
+
+"Whatever the man was who died at St. Helena, I worked for ten years
+in his government, and my brother-in-law was three times wounded
+under his eagles.  I beg of you, dear sir and friend, never to
+forget these facts in future.'
+
+"What the sublime and burlesque insolence of the captain could not
+do, the courteous remonstrance of my father effected immediately,
+throwing Monsieur de Lessay into a furious passion.
+
+"'I did forget,' he exclaimed, between his set teeth, livid in his
+rage, and fairly foaming at the mouth; 'the herring-cask always
+smells of herring and when one has been in the service of rascals---'
+
+"As he uttered the word, the Captain sprang at his throat; I am sure
+he would have strangled him upon the spot but for his daughter and
+me.
+
+"My father, a little paler than his wont, stood there with his arms
+folded, and watched the scene with a look of inexpressible pity.
+What followed was still more lamentable--but why dwell further upon
+the folly of two old men.  Finally I succeeded in separating them.
+Monsieur de Lessay made a sign to his daughter and left the room.
+As she was following him, I ran out into the stairway after her.
+
+"'Mademoiselle,' I said to her, wildly, taking her hand as I spoke,
+'I love you! I love you!'
+
+"For a moment she pressed my hand; her lips opened.  What was it
+that she was going to say to me?  But suddenly, lifting her eyes
+towards her father ascending the stairs, she drew her hand away,
+and made me a gesture of farewell.
+
+"I never saw her again.  Her father went to live in the neighbourhood
+of the Pantheon, in an apartment which he had rented for the sale of
+his historical atlas.  He died in a few months afterward of an
+apoplectic stroke.  His daughter, I was told, retired to Caen to live
+with some aged relative.  It was there that, later on, she married
+a bank-clerk, the same Noel Alexandre who became so rich and died
+so poor.
+
+"As for me, Madame, I have lived alone, at peace with myself; my
+existence, equally exempt from great pains and great joys, has
+been tolerably happy.  But for many years I could never see an
+empty chair beside my own of a winter's evening without feeling a
+sudden painful sinking at my heart.  Last year I learned from you,
+who had known her, the story of her old age and death.  I saw her
+daughter at your house.  I have seen her; but I cannot yet say
+like the aged mad of Scripture, 'And now, O Lord, let thy servant
+depart in peace!'  For if an old fellow like me can be of any use
+to anybody, I would wish, with your help, to devote my last
+energies and abilities to the care of this orphan."
+
+I had uttered these last words in Madame de Gabry's own vestibule;
+and I was about to take leave of my kind guide when she said to me,
+
+"My dear Monsieur, I cannot help you in this matter as much as I
+would like to do.  Jeanne is an orphan and a minor.  You cannot do
+anything for her without the authorisation of her guardian."
+
+"Ah!" I exclaimed, "I had not the least idea in the wold that Jeanne
+had a guardian!"
+
+Madame de Gabry looked at me with visible surprise.  She had not
+expected to find the old man quite so simple.
+
+She resumed:
+
+"The guardian of Jeanne Alexandre is Maitre Mouche, notary at
+Levallois-Perret.  I am afraid you will not be able to come to any
+understanding with him; for he is a very serious person."
+
+"Why! good God!" I cried, "with what kind of people can you expect
+me to have any sort of understanding at my age, except serious
+persons."
+
+She smiled with a sweet mischievousness--just as my father used to
+smile--and answered:
+
+"With those who are like you--the innocent folks who wear their
+hearts on their sleeves.  Monsieur Mouche is not exactly that kind.
+He is cunning and light-fingered.  But although I have very little
+liking for him, we will go together and see him, if you wish, and
+ask his permission to visit Jeanne, whom he has sent to a boarding-
+school at Les Ternes, where she is very unhappy."
+
+We agreed at once upon a day; I kissed Madame de Gabry's hands,
+and we bade each other good-bye.
+
+
+From May 2 to May 5.
+
+
+I have seen him in his office, Maitre Mouche, the guardian of Jeanne.
+Small, thin, and dry; his complexion looks as if it was made out of
+the dust of his pigeon-holes.  He is a spectacled animal; for to
+imagine him without his spectacles would be impossible.  I have
+heard him speak, this Maitre Mouche; he has a voice like a tin
+rattle, and he uses choice phrases; but I should have been better
+pleased if he had not chosen his phrases so carefully.  I have
+observed him, this Maitre Mouche; he is very ceremonious, and watches
+his visitors slyly out of the corner of his eye.
+
+Maitre Mouche is quite pleased, he informs us; he is delighted to
+find we have taken such an interest in his ward.  But he does not
+think we are placed in this world just to amuse ourselves.  No:  he
+does not believe it; and I am free to acknowledge that anybody in
+his company is likely to reach the same conclusion, so little is he
+capable of inspiring joyfulness.  He fears that it would be giving
+his dear ward a false and pernicious idea of life to allow her too
+much enjoyment.  It is for this reason that he requests Madame de
+Gabry not to invite the young girl to her house except at very long
+intervals.
+
+We left the dusty notary and his dusty study with a permit in due
+form (everything which issues from the office of Maitre Mouche is in
+due form) to visit Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre on the first
+Thursday of each month at Mademoiselle Prefere's private school, Rue
+Demours, Aux Ternes.
+
+The first Thursday in May I set out to pay a visit to Mademoiselle
+Prefere, whose establishment I discerned from afar off by a big
+sign, painted with blue letters.  That blue tint was the first
+indication I received of Mademoiselle Prefere's character, which
+I was able to see more of later on.  A scared-looking servant took
+my card, and abandoned me without one word of hope at the door of
+a chilly parlour full of that stale odour peculiar to the dining-
+rooms of educational establishments.  The floor of this parlour had
+been waxed with such pitiless energy, that I remained for awhile
+in distress upon the threshold.  But happily observing that little
+strips of woollen carpet had been scattered over the floor in front
+of each horse-hair chair, I succeeded, by cautiously stepping from
+one carpet-island to another in reaching the angle of the mantlepiece,
+where I sat down quite out of breath.
+
+Over the mantelpiece, in a large gilded frame, was a written document,
+entitled in flamboyant Gothic lettering, Tableau d'Honneur, with
+a long array of names underneath, among which I did not have the
+pleasure of finding that of Jeanne Alexandre.  After having read over
+several times the names of those girl-pupils who had thus made
+themselves honoured in the eyes of Mademoiselle Prefere, I began to
+feel uneasy at not hearing any one coming.  Mademoiselle Prefere
+would certainly have succeeded in establishing the absolute silence
+of interstellar spaces throughout her pedagogical domains, had it
+not been that the sparrows had chosen her yard to assemble in by
+legions, and chirp at the top of their voices.  It was a pleasure
+to hear them.  But there was no way of seeing them--through the
+ground-glass windows.  I had to content myself with the sights of
+the parlour, decorated from floor to ceiling, on all of its four
+walls, with drawings executed by the pupils of the institution.
+There were Vestals, flowers, thatched cottages, column-capitals,
+and an enormous head of Tatius, King of the Sabines, bearing the
+signature Estelle Mouton.
+
+I had already passed some time in admiring the energy with which
+Mademoiselle Mouton had delineated the bushy eyebrows and the fierce
+gaze of the antique warrior, when a sound, faint like the rustling
+of a dead leaf moved by the wind, caused me to turn my head.  It was
+not a dead leaf at all--it was Mademoiselle Prefere.  With hands
+jointed before her, she came gliding over the mirror-polish of that
+wonderful floor as the Saints of the Golden Legend were wont to glide
+over the crystal surface of the waters.  But upon any other occasion,
+I am sure, Mademoiselle Prefere would not have made me think in the
+least about those virgins dear to mystical fancy.  Her face rather
+gave me the idea of a russet-apple preserved or a whole winter in an
+attic by some economical housekeeper.  Her shoulders were covered
+with a fringed pelerine, which had nothing at all remarkable about
+it, but which she wore as if it were a sacerdotal vestment, or the
+symbol of some high civic function.
+
+I explained to her the purpose of my visit, and gave her my letter of
+introduction.
+
+"Ah!--so you are Monsieur Mouche!" she exclaimed.  "Is his health
+VERY good?  He is the most upright of men, the most---"
+
+She did not finish the phrase, but raised her eyes to the ceiling. 
+My own followed the direction of their gaze, and observed a little
+spiral of paper lace, suspended from the place of the chandelier,
+which was apparently destined, so far as I could discover, to attract
+the flies away from the gilded mirror-frames and the Tableau
+d'Honneur.
+
+"I have met Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre," I observed, "at the
+residence of Madame de Gabry and had reason to appreciate the
+excellent character and quick intelligence of the young girl.  As
+I used to know her parents very well, the friendship which I felt
+for them naturally inclines me to take an interest in her."
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere, in lieu of making any reply, sighed profoundly,
+pressed her mysterious pelerine to her heart, and again contemplated
+the paper spiral.
+
+At last she observed,
+
+"Since you were once the friend of Monsieur and Madame Alexandre, I
+hope and trust that, like Monsieur Mouche and myself, you deplore
+those crazy speculations which led them to ruin, and reduced their
+daughter to absolute poverty!"
+
+I thought to myself, on hearing these words, how very wrong it is to
+be unlucky, and how unpardonable such an error on the part of those
+previously in a position worthy of envy.  Their fall at once avenges
+and flatters us; and we are wholly pitiless.
+
+After having answered, very frankly, that I knew nothing whatever
+about the history of the bank, I asked the schoolmistress if she
+was satisfied with Mademoiselle Alexandre.
+
+"That child is indomitable!" cried Mademoiselle Prefere.
+
+And she assumed an attitude of lofty resignation, to symbolise the
+difficult situation she was placed in by a pupil so hard to train.
+Then, with more calmness of manner, she added:
+
+"The young person is not unintelligent.  But she cannot resign herself
+to learn things by rule."
+
+What a strange old maid was this Mademoiselle Prefere!  She walked
+without lifting her legs, and spoke without moving her lips!  Without,
+however, considering her peculiarities for more than a reasonable
+instant, I replied that principles were, no doubt, very excellent
+things, and that I could trust myself to her judgement in regard to
+their value; but that, after all, when one had learned something, it
+very little difference what method had been followed in the learning
+of it.
+
+Mademoiselle made a slow gesture of dissent.  Then with a sigh, she
+declared,
+
+"Ah, Monsieur! those who do not understand educational methods are
+apt to have very false ideas on these subjects.  I am certain they
+express their opinions with the best intentions in the world; but
+they would do better, a great deal better, to leave all such
+questions to competent people."
+
+I did not attempt to argue further; and simply asked her whether I
+could see Mademoiselle Alexandre at once.
+
+She looked at her pelerine, as if trying to read in the entanglements
+of its fringes, as in a conjuring book, what sort of answer she ought
+to make; then said,
+
+"Mademoiselle Alexandre has a penance to perform, and a class-lesson
+to give; but I should be very sorry to let you put yourself to the
+trouble of coming here all to no purpose.  I am going to send for her.
+Only first allow me, Monsieur--as is our custom--to put your name on
+the visitors' register."
+
+She sat down at the table, opened a large copybook, and, taking out
+Maitre Mouche's letter again from under her pelerine, where she had
+placed it, looked at it, and began to write.
+
+"'Bonnard'--with a 'd,' is it not?" she asked.  "Excuse me for being
+so particular; but my opinion is that proper names have an
+orthography.  We have dictation-lessons in proper names, Monsieur,
+at this school--historical proper names, of course!"
+
+After I had written down my name in a running hand, she inquired
+whether she should not put down after it my profession, title,
+quality--such as "retired merchant," "employe," "independent
+gentleman," or something else.  There was a column in her register
+expressly for that purpose.
+
+"My goodness, Madame!" I said, "if you must absolutely fill that
+column of yours, put down 'Member of the Institute.'"
+
+It was still Mademoiselle Prefere's pelerine I saw before me; but
+it was not Mademoiselle Prefere who wore it; it was a totally
+different person, obliging, gracious, caressing, radiant, happy.  Her eyes,
+smiled; the little wrinkles of her face (there were a vast number of
+them!) also smiled; her mouth smiled likewise, but only on one side.
+I discovered afterwards that was her best side.  She spoke:  her
+voice had also changed with her manner; it was now sweet as honey.
+
+"You said, Monsieur, that our dear Jeanne was very intelligent.  I
+discovered the same thing myself, and I am proud of being able to
+agree with you. This young girl has really made me feel a great deal
+of interest in her.  She has what I call a happy disposition....
+But excuse me for thus drawing upon your valuable time."
+
+She summoned the servant-girl, who looked much more hurried and
+scared than before, and who vanished with the order to go and tell
+Mademoiselle Alexandre that Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard, Member of
+the Institute, was waiting to see her in the parlour.
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere had barely time to confide in me that she had
+the most profound respect for all decisions of the Institute--whatever
+they might be--when Jeanne appeared, out of breath, red as a poppy,
+with her eyes very wide open, and her arms dangling helplessly at
+her sides--charming in her artless awkwardness.
+
+"What a state you are in, my dear child!" murmured Mademoiselle
+Prefere, with maternal sweetness, as she arranged the girl's collar.
+
+Jeanne certainly did present an odd aspect.  Her hair combed back,
+and imperfectly held by a net from which loose curls were escaping;
+her slender arms, sheathed down to the elbows in lustring sleeves;
+her hands, which she did not seem to know what to do with, all red
+with chillblains; her dress, much too short, revealing that she had
+on stockings much too large for her, and shoes worn down at the heel;
+and a skipping-rope tied round her waist in lieu of a belt,--all
+combined to lend Mademoiselle Jeanne an appearance the reverse of
+presentable.
+
+"Oh, you crazy girl!" sighed Mademoiselle Prefere, who now seemed no
+longer like a mother, but rather like an elder sister.
+
+Then she suddenly left the room, gliding like a shadow over the
+polished floor.
+
+I said to Jeanne,
+
+"Sit down, Jeanne, and talk to me as you would to a friend.  Are you
+not better satisfied here now than you were last year?"
+
+She hesitated; then answered with a good-natured smile of resignation,
+
+"Not much better."
+
+I asked her to tell me about her school life.  She began at once to
+enumerate all her different studies--piano, style, chronology of the
+Kings of France, sewing, drawing, catechism, deportment...  I could
+never remember them all!  She still held in her hands, all
+unconsciously, the two ends of her skipping-rope, and she raised and
+lowered them regularly while making her enumeration.  Then all at
+once she became conscious of what she was doing, blushed, stammered,
+and became so confused that I had to renounce my desire to know the
+full programme of study adopted in the Prefere Institution.
+
+After having questioned Jeanne on various matters, and obtained only
+the vaguest of answers, I perceived that her young mind was totally
+absorbed by the skipping-rope, and I entered bravely into that grave
+subject.
+
+"So you have been skipping?" I said.  "It is a very nice amusement,
+but one that you must not exert yourself too much at; for any
+excessive exercise of that kind might seriously injure your health,
+and I should be very much grieved about it Jeanne--I should be very
+much grieved, indeed!"
+
+"You are very kind, Monsieur," the young girl said, "to have come
+to see me and talk to me like this.  I did not think about thanking
+you when I came in, because I was too much surprised.  Have you seen
+Madame de Gabry?  Please tell me something about her, Monsieur."
+
+"Madame de Gabry," I answered, "is very well.  I can only tell you
+about her, Jeanne, what an old gardener once said of the lady of
+the castle, his mistress, when somebody anxiously inquired about her:
+'Madame is in her road.'  Yes, Madame de Gabry is in her own road;
+and you know, Jeanne, what a good road it is, and how steadily she
+can walk upon it.  I went out with her the other day, very, very
+far away from the house; and we talked about you.  We talked about
+you, my child, at your mother's grave."
+
+"I am very glad," said Jeanne.
+
+And then, all at once, she began to cry.
+
+I felt too much reverence for those generous tears to attempt in any
+way to check the emotion that had evoked them.  But in a little
+while, as the girl wiped her eyes, I asked her,
+
+"Will you not tell me, Jeanne, why you were thinking so much about
+that skipping-rope a little while ago?"
+
+"Why, indeed I will, Monsieur.  It was only because I had no right to
+come into the parlour with a skipping-rope.  You know, of course,
+that I am past the age for playing at skipping.  But when the servant
+said there was an old gentleman...oh!...I mean...that a gentleman
+was waiting for me in the parlour, I was making the little girls
+jump.  Then I tied the rope round my waist in a hurry, so that it
+might not get lost.  It was wrong.  But I have not been in the habit
+of having many people come to see me.  And Mademoiselle Prefere
+never lets us off if we commit any breach of deportment:  so I know
+she is going to punish me, and I am very sorry about it."...
+
+"That is too bad, Jeanne!"
+
+She became very grave, and said,
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, it is too bad; because when I am punished myself, I
+have no more authority over the little girls."
+
+I did not at once fully understand the nature of this unpleasantness;
+but Jeanne explained to me that, as she was charged by Mademoiselle
+Prefere with the duties of taking care of the youngest class, of
+washing and dressing the children, of teaching them how to behave,
+how to sew, how to say the alphabet, of showing them how to play,
+and, finally, of putting them to bed at the close of the day, she
+could not make herself obeyed by those turbulent little folks on
+the days she was condemned to wear a night-cap in the class-room,
+or to eat her meals standing up, from a plate turned upside down.
+
+Having secretly admired the punishments devised by the Lady of the
+Enchanted Pelerine, I responded:
+
+"Then, if I understand you rightly, Jeanne, you are at once a pupil
+here and a mistress?  It is a condition of existence very common
+in the world.  You are punished, and you punish?"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur!" she exclaimed.  "No! I never punish!"
+
+"Then, I suspect," said I, "that your indulgence gets you many
+scoldings from Mademoiselle Prefere?"
+
+She smiled, and blinked.
+
+Then I said to her that the troubles in which we often involve
+ourselves, by trying to act according to our conscience and to do
+the best we can, are never of the sort that totally dishearten and
+weary us, but are, on the contrary, wholesome trials.  This sort
+of philosophy touched her very little.  She even appeared totally
+unmoved by my moral exhortations.  But was not this quite natural
+on her part?--and ought I not to have remembered that it is only
+those no longer innocent who can find pleasure in the systems of
+moralists?...  I had at least good sense enough to cut short my
+sermonising.
+
+"Jeanne," I said, "you were asking a moment ago about Madame de
+Gabry.  Let us talk about that Fairy of yours  She was very prettily
+made.  Do you do any modelling in wax now?"
+
+"I have not a bit of wax," she exclaimed, wringing her hands--"no
+wax at all!"
+
+"No wax!" I cried--"in a republic of busy bees?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"And, then, you see, Monsieur, my FIGURINES, as you call them, are
+not in Mademoiselle Prefere's programme.  But I had begun to make
+a very small Saint-George for Madame de Gabry--a tiny little
+Saint-George, with a golden cuirass.  Is not that right, Monsieur
+Bonnard--to give Saint-George a gold cuirass?"
+
+"Quite right, Jeanne; but what became of it?"
+
+"I am going to tell you, I kept it in my pocket because I had no
+other place to put it, and--and I sat down on it by mistake."
+
+She drew out of her pocket a little wax figure, which had been
+squeezed out of all resemblance to human form, and of which the
+dislocated limbs were only attached to the body by their wire
+framework.  At the sight of her hero thus marred, she was seized
+at once with compassion and gaiety.  The latter feeling obtained
+the mastery, and she burst into a clear laugh, which, however,
+stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere stood at the parlour door, smiling.
+
+"That dear child!" sighed the schoolmistress in her tenderest tone.
+"I am afraid she will tire you.  And, then, your time is so
+precious!"
+
+I begged Mademoiselle Prefere to dismiss that illusion, and,
+rising to take my leave, I took from my pocket some chocolate-cakes
+and sweets which I had brought with me.
+
+"That is so nice!" said Jeanne; "there will be enough to go round
+the whole school."
+
+The lady of the pelerine intervened.
+
+"Mademoiselle Alexandre," she said, "thank Monsieur for his
+generosity."
+
+Jeanne looked at her for an instant in a sullen way; then, turning
+to me, said with remarkable firmness,
+
+"Monsieur, I thank you for your kindness in coming to see me."
+
+"Jeanne," I said, pressing both her hands, "remain always a good,
+truthful, brave girl.  Good-bye."
+
+As she left the room with her packages of chocolate and
+confectionery, she happened to strike the handles of her skipping-
+rope against the back of a chair.  Mademoiselle Prefere, full of
+indignation, pressed both hands over her heart, under her pelerine;
+and I almost expected to see her give up her scholastic ghost.
+
+When we found ourselves alone, she recovered her composure; and I
+must say, without considering myself thereby flattered, that she
+smiled upon me with one whole side of her face.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, taking advantage of her good humour, "I
+noticed that Jeanne Alexandre looks a little pale.  You know better
+than I how much consideration and care a young girl requires at
+her age.  It would only be doing you an injustice by implication
+to recommend her still more earnestly to your vigilance."
+
+These words seemed to ravish her with delight.  She lifted her eyes,
+as in ecstasy, to the paper spirals of the ceiling, and, clasping
+her hands exclaimed,
+
+"How well these eminent men know the art of considering the most
+trifling details!"
+
+I called her attention to the fact that the health of a young girl
+was not a trifling detail, and made my farewell bow.  But she
+stopped me on the threshold to say to me, very confidentially,
+
+"You must excuse me, Monsieur.  I am a woman, and I love gloy.  I
+cannot conceal from you the fact that I feel myself greatly honoured
+by the presence of a Member of the Institute in my humble
+institution."
+
+I duly excused the weakness of Mademoiselle Prefere; and, thinking
+only of Jeanne, with the blindness of egotism, kept asking myself
+all along the road, "What are we going to do with this child?"
+
+
+June 3.
+
+
+I had escorted to the Cimetiere de Marnes that day a very aged
+colleague of mine who, to use the words of Goethe, had consented to
+die.  The great Goethe, whose own vital force was something
+extraordinary, actually believed that one never dies until one really
+wants to die--that is to say, when all those energies which resist
+dissolution, and teh sum of which make up life itself, have been
+totally destroyed.  In other words, he believed that people only
+die when it is no longer possible for them to live.  Good! it is
+merely a question of properly understanding one another; and when
+fully comprehended, the magnificent idea of Goethe only brings
+us quietly back to the song of La Palisse.
+
+Well, my excellent colleague had consented to die--thanks to several
+successive attacks of extremely persuasive apoplexy--the last of
+which proved unanswerable.  I had been very little acquainted with
+him during his lifetime; but it seems that I became his friend the
+moment he was dead, for our colleagues assured me in a most serious
+manner, with deeply sympathetic countenances, that I should act as
+one of the pall-bearers, and deliver an address over the tomb.
+
+After having read very badly a short address I had written as well
+as I could--which is not saying much for it--I started out for a
+walk in the woods of Ville-d'Avray, and followed, without leaning
+too much on the Captain's cane, a shaded path on which the sunlight
+fell, through foliage, in little discs of gold.  Never had the scent
+of grass and fresh leaves,--never had the beauty of the sky over the
+trees, and the serene might of noble tree contours, so deeply
+affected my senses and all my being; and the pleasure I felt in that
+silence, broken only by faintest tinkling sounds, was at once of
+the senses and of the soul.
+
+I sat down in the shade of the roadside under a clump of young oaks.
+And there I made a promise to myself not to die, or at least not
+to consent to die, before I should be again able to sit down under
+and oak, where--in the great peace of the open country--I could
+meditate on the nature of the soul and the ultimate destiny of man.
+A bee, whose brown breast-plate gleamed in the sun like armour of
+old gold, came to light upon a mallow-flower close by me--darkly
+rich in colour, and fully opened upon its tufted stalk.  It was
+certainly not the first time I had witnessed so common an incident;
+but it was the first time that I had watched it with such
+comprehensive and friendly curiosity.  I could discern that there
+were all sorts of sympathies between the insect and the flower--a
+thousand singular little relationships which I had never before even
+suspected.
+
+Satiated with nectar, the insect rose and buzzed away in a straight
+line, while I lifted myself up as best I could, and readjusted myself
+upon my legs.
+
+"Adieu!" I said to the flower and to the bee.  "Adieu! Heaven grant
+I may live long enough to discover the secret of your harmonies.  I
+am very tired.  But man is so made that he can only find relaxation
+from one kind of labour by taking up another.  The flowers and
+insects will give me that relaxation, with God's will, after my
+long researches in philology and diplomatics.  How full of meaning
+is that old myth of Antaeus!  I have touched the Earth and I am a
+new man; and now at seventy years of age, new feelings of curiosity
+take birth in my mind, even as young shoots sometimes spring up
+from the hollow trunk of an aged oak!"
+
+
+June 4.
+
+
+I like to look out of my window at the Seine and its quays on those
+soft grey mornings which give such an infinite tenderness of tint
+to everything.  I have seen that azure sky which flings so luminous
+a calm over the Bay of Naples.  But our Parisian sky is more
+animated, more kindly, more spiritual.  It smiles, threatens,
+caresses--takes an aspect of melancholy or a look of merriment
+like a human gaze.  At this moment it is pouring down a very gentle
+light on the men and beasts of the city as they accomplish their
+daily tasks.  Over there, on the opposite bank, the stevedores of
+the Port Saint-Nicholas are unloading a cargo of cow's horns;
+while two men standing on a gangway are tossing sugar-loaves from
+one to the other, and thence to somebody in the hold of a steamer.
+On the north quay, the cab-horses, standing in a line under the
+shade of the plane-trees each with its head in a nose-bag, are
+quietly munching their oats, while the rubicund drivers are drinking
+at the counter of the wine-seller opposite, but all the while
+keeping a sharp lookout for early customers.
+
+The dealers in second-hand books put their boxes on the parapet.
+These good retailers of Mind, who are always in the open air, with
+blouses loose to the breeze, have become so weatherbeaten by the
+wind, the rain, the frost, the snow, the fog, and the great sun,
+that they end by looking very much like the old statues of
+cathedrals.  They are all friends of mine, and I scarcely ever
+pass by their boxes without picking out of one of them some old book
+which I had always been in need of up to that very moment, without
+any suspicion of the fact on my part.
+
+Then on my return home I have to endure the outcries of my
+housekeeper, who accuses me of bursting all my pockets and filling
+the house with waste paper to attract the rats.  Therese is wise
+about that, and it is because she is wise that I do not listen to
+her; for in spite of my tranquil mien, I have always preferred the
+folly of the passions to the wisdom of indifference.  But just
+because my own passions are not of that sort which burst out with
+violence to devastate and kill, the common mind is not aware of
+their existence.  Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by them at times,
+and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the
+sake of a few pages written by some forgotten monk or printed by
+some humble apprentice of Peter Schaeffer.  And if these fierce
+enthusiasms are slowly being quenched in me, it is only because
+I am being slowly quenched myself.  Our passions are ourselves.
+My old books are Me.  I am just as old and thumb-worn as they are.
+
+A light breeze sweeps away, along with the dust of the pavements,
+the winged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay
+dropped from the mouths of the horses.  The dust is nothing remarkable
+in itself; but as I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my
+childhood when I watched just such a swirl of dust; and my old
+Parisian soul is much affected by that sudden recollection.  All
+that I see from my window--that horizon which extends to the left
+as far as the hills of Chaillot, and enables me to distinguish the
+Arc de Triomphe like a die of stone, the Seine, river of glory, and
+its bridges, the ash-trees of the terrace of the Tuileries, the
+Louvre of the Renaissance, cut and graven like goldsmithwork; and
+on my right, towards the Pont-Neuf (pons Lutetiae Novus dictus,
+as it is named on old engravings), all the old and venerable part
+of Paris, with its towers and spires:--all that is my life, it is
+myself; and I should be nothing but for all those things which are
+thus reflected in me through my thousand varying shades of thought,
+inspiring me and animating me.  That is why I love Paris with an
+immense love.
+
+And nevertheless I am weary, and I know that there can be no rest
+for me in the heart of this great city which thinks so much, which
+has taught me to think, and which for ever urges me to think more.
+And how avoid being exited among all these books which incessantly
+tempt my curiosity without ever satisfying it?  At one moment it
+is a date I have to look for; at another it is the name of a place
+I have to make sure of, or some quaint term of which it is important
+to determine the exact meaning.  Words?--why, yes! words.  As a
+philologist, I am their sovereign; they aer my subjects, and, like
+a good king, I devote my whole life to them.  But shall I not be able
+to abdicate some day?  I have an idea that there is somewhere or
+other, quite far from here, a certain little cottage where I could
+enjoy the quiet I so much need, while awaiting that day in which a
+greater quiet--that which can be never broken--shall come to wrap
+me all about.  I dream of a bench before the threshold, and of
+fields spreading away out of sight.  But I must have a fresh smiling
+young face beside me, to reflect and concentrate all that freshness
+of nature.  I could then imagine myself a grandfather, and all the
+long void of my life would be filled....
+
+I am not a violent man, and yet I become easily vexed, and all my
+works have caused me quite as much pain as pleasure.  And I do not
+know how it is that I still keep thinking about that very conceited
+and very inconsiderated impertinence which my young friend of the
+Luxembourg took the liberty to utter about me some three months ago.
+I do not call him "friend" in irony, for I love studious youth with
+all it temerities and imaginative eccentricities.  Still, my young
+friend certainly went beyond all bounds.  Master Ambroise Pare, who
+was the first to attempt the ligature of arteries, and who, having
+commenced his profession at a time when surgery was only performed
+by quack barbers, nevertheless succeeded in lifting the science to
+the high place it now occupies, was assailed in his old age by all
+the young sawbones' apprentices.  Being grossly abused during a
+discussion by some young addlehead who might have been the best
+son in the world, but who certainly lacked all sense of respect,
+the old master answered him in his treatise De la Mumie, de la
+Licorne, des Venins et de la Peste.  "I pray him," said the great
+man--"I pray him, that if he desire to make any contradictions to
+my reply, he abandon all animosities, and treat the good old man
+with gentleness."  This answer seems admirable from the pen of
+Ambroise Pare; but even had it been written by a village bonesetter,
+grown grey in his calling, and mocked by some young stripling, it
+would still be worthy of all praise.
+
+It might perhaps seem that my memory of the incident had been kept
+alive only by a base feeling of resentment.  I thought so myself at
+first, and reproached myself for thus dwelling on the saying of a
+boy who could not yet know the meaning of his own words.  But my
+reflections on this subject subsequently took a better course:
+that is why I now note them down in my diary.  I remembered that one
+day when I was twenty years old (that was more than half a century
+ago) I was walking about in that very same garden of the Luxembourg
+with some comrades.  We were talking about our old professors; and
+one of us happened to name Monsieur Petit-Radel, an estimable and
+learned man, who was the first to throw some light upon the origins
+of early Etruscan civilisation, but who had been unfortunate
+enough to prepare a chronological table of the lovers of Helen.  We
+all laughed a great deal about that chronological table; and I
+cried out, "Petit-Radel is an ass, not in three letters, but in
+twelve whole volumes!"
+
+This foolish speech of my adolescence was uttered too lightly to
+be a weight on my conscience as an old man.  May God kindly prove
+to me some day that I never used an less innocent shaft of speech
+in the battle of life!  But I now ask myself whether I really
+never wrote, at any time in my life, something quite as unconsciously
+absurd as the chronological table of the lovers of Helen.  The
+progress of science renders useless the very books which have been
+the greatest aids to that progress.  As those works are no longer
+useful, modern youth is naturally inclined to believe they never had
+any value; it despises them, and ridicules them if they happen to
+contain any superannuated opinion whatever.  That is why, in my
+twentieth year, I amused myself at the expense of Monsieur
+Petit-Radel and his chronological table; and that was why, the
+other day, at the Luxembourg, my young and irreverent friend...
+
+"Rentre en toi-meme, Octave, et cesse de te plaindre.  Quoi! tu
+veux qu'on t'epargne et n'as rien epargne!" [ "Look into thyself,
+Octavius, and cease complaining.  What! thou wouldst be spared,
+and thou thyself hast spared none!"]
+
+
+June 6.
+
+
+
+It was the first Thursday in June.  I shut up my books and took my
+leave of the holy abbot Droctoveus, who, being now in the enjoyment
+of celestial bliss, cannot feel very impatient to behold his name
+and works glorified on earth through the humble compilation being
+prepared by my hands.  Must I confess it?  That mallow-plant I
+saw visited by a bee the other day has been occupying my thoughts
+much more than all the ancient abbots who ever bore croisers or
+wore mitres.  There is in one of Sprengel's books which I read in
+my youth, at that time when I used to read in my youth, at that
+time when I used to read anything and everything, some ideas about
+"the loves of flowers" which now return to memory after having been
+forgotten for half a century, and which to-day interest me so much
+that I regret not to have devoted the humble capacities of my
+mind to the study of insects and of plants.
+
+And only awhile ago my housekeeper surprised me at the kitchen window,
+in the act of examining some wallflowers through a magnifying-
+glass....
+
+It was while looking for my cravat that I made these reflections.
+But after searching to no purpose in a great number of drawers, I
+found myself obliged, after all, to have recourse to my housekeeper.
+Therese came limping in.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "you ought to have told me you were going out,
+and I would have given you your cravat!"
+
+"But Therese," I replied, "would it not be a great deal better to
+put in some place where I could find it without your help?"
+
+Therese did not deign to answer me.
+
+Therese no longer allows me to arrange anything.  I cannot even have
+a handkerchief without asking her for it; and as she is deaf,
+crippled, and, what is worse, beginning to lose her memory, I
+languish in perpetual destitution.  But she exercises her domestic
+authority with such quiet pride that I do not feel the courage
+to attempt a coup d'etat against her government.
+
+"My cravat!  Therese!--do you hear?--my cravat! if you drive me wild
+like this with your slow ways, it will not be a cravat I shall need,
+but a rope to hang myself!"
+
+"You must be in a very great hurry, Monsieur," replied Therese.
+"Your cravat is not lost.  Nothing is ever lost in this house,
+because I have charge of everything.  But please allow me the time
+at least to find it."
+
+"Yet here," I thought to myself--"here is the result of half a
+century of devotedness and self-sacrifice!...  Ah! if by any happy
+chance this inexorable Therese had once in her whole life, only
+once, failed in her duty as a servant--if she had ever been at fault
+for one single instant, she could never have assumed this inflexible
+authority over me, and I should at least have the courage to resist
+her.  But how can one resist virtue?  The people who have no
+weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.
+Just look at Therese, for example; she has not a single fault for
+which you can blame her!  She has no doubt of herself; nor of God,
+nor of the world.  She is the valiant woman, the wise virgin of
+Scripture; others may know nothing about her, but I know her worth.
+In my fancy I always see her carrying a lamp, a humble kitchen lamp,
+illuminating the beams of some rustic roof--a lamp which will never
+go out while suspended from that meagre arm of hers, scraggy and
+strong as a vine-branch.
+
+"Therese, my cravat!  Don't you know, wretched woman, that to-day
+is the first Thursday in June, and that Mademoiselle Jeanne will
+be waiting for me?  The schoolmistress has certainly had the
+parlour floor vigorously waxed:  I am sure one can look at oneself
+in it now; and it will be quite a consolation for me when I slip
+and break my old bones upon it--which is sure to happen sooner
+or later--to see my rueful countenance reflected in it as in a
+looking-glass.  Then taking for my model that amiable and admirable
+hero whose image is carved upon the handle of Uncle Victor's
+walking-stick, I will control myself so as not to make too ugly a
+grimace....  See what a splendid sun!  The quays are all gilded by
+it, and the Seine smiles in countless little flashing wrinkles.
+The city is gold:  a dust-haze, blonde and gold-toned as a woman's
+hair, floats above its beautiful contours....  Therese, my cravat!...
+Ah!  I can now comprehend the wisdom of that old Chrysal who used
+to keep his neckbands in a big Plutarch.  Hereafter I shall follow
+his example by laying all my neckties away between the leaves
+of the Acta Sanctorum."
+
+Therese let me talk on, and keeps looking for the necktie in silence.
+I hear a gentle ringing at our door-bell.
+
+"Therese," I exclaim; "there is somebody ringing the bell!  Give me
+my cravat, and go to the door; or, rather, go to the door first,
+and then, with the help of Heaven, you will give me my cravat.  But
+please do not stand there between the clothes-press and the door
+like an old hack-horse between two saddles.
+
+Therese marched to the door as if advancing upon the enemy.  My
+excellent housekeeper becomes more inhospitable the older she grows.
+Every stranger is an object of suspicion to her.  According to her
+own assertion, this disposition is the result of a long experience
+with human nature.  I had not the time to consider whether the same
+experience on the part of another experimenter would produce the
+same results.  Maitre Mouche was waiting to see me in the ante-room.
+
+Maitre Mouche is still more yellow than I had believed him to be.
+He wears blue glasses, and his eyes keep moving uneasily behind them,
+like mice running about behind a screen.
+
+Maitre Mouche excuses himself for having intruded upon me at a moment
+when....  He does not characterise the moment; but I think he means
+to say a moment in which I happen to be without my cravat.  It is
+not my fault, as you very well know.  Maitre Mouche, who does not
+know, does not appear to be at all shocked, however.  He is only
+afraid that he might have dropped in at the wrong moment.  I
+succeeded in partially reassuring him at once upon that point.  He
+then tells me it is as guardian of Mademoiselle Alexandre that he
+has come to talk with me.  First of all, he desires that I shall
+not hereafter pay any heed to those restrictions he had at first
+deemed necessary to put upon the permit given to visit Mademoiselle
+Jeanne at the boarding-school.  Henceforth the establishment of
+Mademoiselle Prefere will be open to me any day that I might choose
+to call--between the hours of midday and four o'clock.  Knowing
+the interest I have taken in the young girl, he considers it his
+duty to give me some information about the person to whom he has
+confided his ward.  Mademoiselle Prefere, whom he has known for
+many years, is in possession of his utmost confidence.  Mademoiselle
+Prefere is, in his estimation, an enlightened person, of excellent
+morals, and capable of giving excellent counsel.
+
+"Mademoiselle Prefer," he said to me, "has principles; and principles
+are rare these days, Monsieur.  Everything has been totally changed;
+and this epoch of ours cannot compare with the preceding ones."
+
+"My stairway is a good example, Monsieur," I replied; "twenty-five
+years ago it used to allow me to climb it without any trouble, and
+now it takes my breath away, and wears my legs out before I have
+climbed half a dozen steps.  It has had its character spoiled.  Then
+there are those journals and books I used once to devour without
+difficulty by moonlight:  to-day, even in the brightest sunlight,
+they mock my curiosity, and exhibit nothing but a blur of white and
+black when I have not got my spectacles on.  Then the gout has got
+into my limbs.  That is another malicious trick of the times!"
+
+"Not only that, Monsieur," gravely replied Maitre Mouche, "but what
+is really unfortunate in our epoch is that no one is satisfied with
+his position.  From the top of society to the bottom, in every class,
+there prevails a discontent, a restlessness, a love of comfort...."
+
+"Mon Dieu, Monsieur!" I exclaimed.  "You think this love of comfort
+is a sign of the times?  Men have never had at any epoch a love of
+discomfort.  They have always tried to better their condition.  This
+constant effort produces constant changes, and the effort is always
+going on--that is all there is about it!"
+
+"Ah! Monsieur," replied Maitre Mouche, "it is easy to see that you
+live in your books--out of the business world altogether.  You do
+not see, as I see them, the conflicts of interest, the struggle
+for money.  It is the same effervescence in all minds, great or
+small.  The wildest speculations are being everywhere indulged in.
+What I see around me simply terrifies me!"
+
+I wondered within myself whether Maitre Mouche had called upon me
+only for the purpose of expressing his virtuous misanthropy; but
+all at once I heard words of a more consoling character issue from
+his lips.  Maitre Mouche began to speak to me of Virginie Prefere
+as a person worthy of respect, of esteem, and of sympathy,--highly
+honourable, capable of great devotedness, cultivated, discreet,--able
+to read aloud remarkably well, extremely modest, and skillful in
+the art of applying blisters.  Then I began to understand that he
+had only been painting that dismal picture of universal corruption
+in order the better to bring out, by contrast, the virtues of the
+schoolmistress.  I was further informed that the institution in the
+Rue Demours was well patronised, prosperous, and enjoyed a high
+reputation with the public.  Maitre Mouche lifted up his hand--with
+a black woollen glove on it--as if making oath to the truth of these
+statements.  Then he added:
+
+"I am enabled, by the very character of my profession, to know a
+great deal about people.  A notary is, to a certain extent, a
+father-confessor.
+
+"I deemed it my duty, Monsieur, to give you this agreeable
+information at the moment when a lucky chance enabled you to meet
+Mademoiselle Prefere.  There is only one thing more which I would
+like to say.  This lady--who is, of course, quite unaware of my
+action in the matter--spoke to me of you the other day in terms
+of deepest sympathy.  I could only weaken their expression by
+repeating them to you; and furthermore, I could not repeat them
+without betraying, to a certain extent, the confidence of Mademoiselle
+Prefere."
+
+"Do not betray it, Monsieur; do not betray it!" I responded.  "To
+tell you the truth, I had no idea that Mademoiselle Prefere knew
+anything whatever about me.  But since you have the influence of
+an old friend with her, I will take advantage of your good will,
+Monsieur, to ask you to exercise that influence in behalf of
+Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre.  The child--for she is still a
+child--is overloaded with work.  She is at once a pupil and a
+mistress--she is overtasked.  Besides, she is punished in petty
+disgusting ways; and hers is one of those generous natures which
+will be forced into revolt by such continual humiliation."
+
+"Alas!" replied Maitre Mouche, "she must be trained to take her part
+in the struggle of life.  One does not come into this world simply
+to amuse oneself, and to do just what one pleases."
+
+"One comes into this world," I responded, rather warmly, "to enjoy
+what is beautiful and what is good, and to do as one pleases, when
+the things one wants to do are noble, intelligent, and generous.
+An education which does not cultivate the will, is an education
+that depraves the mind.  It is a teacher's duty to teach the pupil
+HOW to will."
+
+I perceived that Maitre Mouche began to think me a rather silly man.
+With a great deal of quiet self-assurance, he proceeded:
+
+"You must remember, Monsieur, that the education of the poor has to
+be conducted with a great deal of circumspection, and with a view to
+that future state of dependence they must occupy in society.  Perhaps
+you are not aware that the late Noel Alexandre died a bankrupt, and
+that his daughter is being educated almost by charity?"
+
+"Oh! Monsieur!" I exclaimed, "do not say it!  To say it is to pay
+oneself back, and then the statement ceases to be true."
+
+"The liabilities of the estate," continued the notary, "exceeded the
+assets.  But I was able to effect a settlement with the creditors
+in favour of the minor."
+
+He undertook to explain matters in detail.   I declined to listen to
+these explanations, being incapable of understanding business methods
+in general, and those of Maitre Mouche in particular.  The notary
+then took it upon himself to justify Mademoiselle Prefere's
+educational system, and observed by way of conclusion,
+
+"It is not by amusing oneself that one can learn."
+
+"It is only by amusing oneself that one can learn," I replied.  "The
+whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural
+curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards;
+and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion
+as the mind is contented and happy.  Those acquirements crammed by
+force into the minds of children simply clog and stifle intelligence.
+In order that knowledge be properly digested, it must have been
+swallowed with a good appetite.  I know Jeanne!  If that child were
+intrusted to my care, I should make of her--not a learned woman, for
+I would look to her future happiness only--but a child full of
+bright intelligence and full of life, in whom everything beautiful
+in art or nature would awaken some gentle responsive thrill.  I
+would teach her to live in sympathy with all that is beautiful--comely
+landscapes, the ideal scenes of poetry and history, the emotional
+charm of noble music.  I would make lovable to her everything I would
+wish her to love.  Even her needlework I would make pleasurable to
+her, by a proper choice of fabrics, the style of embroideries, the
+designs of lace.  I would give her a beautiful dog, and a pony to
+teach her how to manage animals; I would give her birds to take care
+of, so that she could learn the value of even a drop of water and a
+crumb of bread.  And in order that she should have a still higher
+pleasure, I would train her to find delight in exercising charity.
+And inasmuch as none of us may escape pain, I should teach her that
+Christian wisdom which elevates us above all suffering, and gives
+a beauty even to grief itself.  That is my idea of the right way to
+educate a young girl."
+
+"I yield, Monsieur," replied Maitre Mouche, joining his black-gloved
+hands together.
+
+And he rose.
+
+"Of course you understand," I remarked, as I went to the door with
+him, "that I do not pretend for a moment to impose my educational
+system upon Mademoiselle Prefere; it is necessarily a private one,
+and quite incompatible with the organisation of even the best-managed
+boarding schools.  I only ask you to persuade her to give Jeanne
+less work and more play, and not to punish her except in case of
+absolute necessity, and to let her have as much freedom of mind
+and body as the regulations of the institution permit."
+
+It was with a pale and mysterious smile that Maitre Mouche informed
+me that my observations would be taken in good part, and should
+receive all possible consideration.
+
+Therewith he made me a little bow, and took his departure, leaving
+me with a peculiar feeling of discomfort and uneasiness.  I have
+met a great many strange characters in my time, but never any at
+all resembling either this notary or this schoolmistress.
+
+
+July 6.
+
+
+Maitre Mouche has so much delayed me by his visit that I gave up
+going to see Jeanne that day.  Professional duties kept me very busy
+for the rest of the week.  Although at the age when most men retire
+altogether from active life, I am still attached by a thousand ties
+to the society in which I have lived.  I have to reside at meetings
+of academies, scientific congresses, assemblies of various learned
+bodies.  I am overburdened with honorary functions; I have seven of
+these in one governmental department alone.  The bureaux would be
+very glad to get rid of them.  But habit is stronger than both of us
+together, and I continue to hobble up the stairs of various
+government buildings.  Old clerks point me out to each other as I go
+by like a ghost wandering through the corridors.  When one has become
+very old one finds it extremely difficult to disappear.  Nevertheless,
+it is time, as the old song says, 'de prendre ma retraite et de
+songer a faire un fin"--to retire on my pension and prepare myself
+to die a good death.
+
+An old marchioness, who used to be a friend of Hevetius in her youth,
+and whom I once met at my father's house when a very old woman, was
+visited during her last sickness by the priest of her parish, who
+wanted to prepare her to die.
+
+"Is that really necessary?" she asked.  "I see everybody else manage
+it perfectly well the first time."
+
+My father went to see her very soon afterwards and found her extremely
+ill.
+
+"Good-evening, my friend!" she said, pressing his hand.  "I am going
+to see whether God improves upon acquaintance."
+
+So were wont to die the belles amies of the philosophers.  Such
+an end is certainly not vulgar nor impertinent, and such levities
+are not of the sort that emanate from dull minds.  Nevertheless, they
+shock me.  Neither my fears nor my hopes could accommodate themselves
+to such a mode of departure.  I would like to make mine with a
+perfectly collected mind; and that is why I must begin to think, in
+a year or two, about some way of belonging to myself; otherwise, I
+should certainly risk....  But, hush! let Him not hear His name and
+turn to look as He passes by!  I can still lift my fagot without His
+aid.
+
+...I found Jeanne very happy indeed.  She told me that, on the
+Thursday previous, after the visit of her guardian, Mademoiselle
+Prefere had set her free from the ordinary regulations and lightened
+her tasks in several ways.  Since that lucky Thursday she could walk
+in the garden--which only lacked leaves and flowers--as much as
+she liked; and she had been given facilities to work at her
+unfortunate little figure of Saint-George.
+
+She said to me, with a smile,
+
+"I know very well that I owe all of this to you."
+
+I tried to talk with her about other matters, but I remarked that
+she could not attend to what I was saying, in spite of her effort
+to do so.
+
+"I see you are thinking about something else," I said.  "Well, tell
+me what it is; for, if you do not, we shall not be able to talk to
+each other at all, which would be very unworthy of both of us."
+
+She answered,
+
+"Oh! I was really listening to you, Monsieur; but it is true that I
+was thinking about something else.  You will excuse me, won't you?
+I could not help thinking that Mademoiselle Prefere must like you
+very, very much indeed, to have become so good to me all of a
+sudden."
+
+Then she looked at me in an odd, smiling, frightened way, which made
+me laugh.
+
+"Does that surprise you?" I asked.
+
+"Very much," she replied.
+
+"Please tell me why?"
+
+"Because I can see no reason, no reason at all...but there!...no
+reason at all why you should please Mademoiselle Prefere so much."
+
+"So, then, you think I am very displeasing, Jeanne?"
+
+She bit her lips, as if to punish them for having made a mistake;
+and then, in a coaxing way, looking at me with great soft eyes, gentle
+and beautiful as a spaniel's, she said,
+
+"I know I said a foolish think; but, still, I do not see any reason
+why you should be so pleasing to Mademoiselle Prefere.  And,
+nevertheless, you seem to please her a great deal--a very great deal.
+She called me one day, and asked me all sorts of questions about
+you."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes; she wanted to find out all about your house.  Just think! she
+even asked me how old your servant was!"
+
+And Jeanne burst out laughing.
+
+"Well, what do you think about it?" I asked.
+
+She remained a long while with her eyes fixed on the worn-out cloth
+of her shoes, and seemed to be thinking very deeply.  Finally,
+looking up again, she answered,
+
+"I am distrustful.  Isn't it very natural to feel uneasy about what
+one cannot understand; I know I am foolish; but you won't be offended
+with me, will you?"
+
+"Why, certainly not, Jeanne.  I am not a bit offended with you."
+
+I must acknowledge that I was beginning to share her surprise; and I
+began to turn over in my old head the singular thought of this young
+girl--"One is uneasy about what one cannot understand."
+
+But, with a fresh burst of merriment, she cried out,
+
+"She asked me...guess!  I will give you a hundred guesses--a thousand
+guesses.  You give it up?...  She asked me if you liked good eating."
+
+"And how did you receive this shower of interrogations, Jeanne?"
+
+"I replied, 'I don't know, Mademoiselle.' And Mademoiselle then said
+to me, 'You are a little fool.  The least details of the life of an
+eminent man ought to be observed.  Please to know, Mademoiselle, that
+Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard is one of the glories of France!'"
+
+"Stuff!" I exclaimed.  "And what did YOU think about it,
+Mademoiselle?"
+
+"I thought that Mademoiselle Prefere was right.  But I don't care at
+all...(I know it is naughty what I am going to say)...I don't care
+a bit, not a bit, whether Mademoiselle Prefere is or is not right
+about anything."
+
+"Well, then, content yourself, Jeanne, Mademoiselle Prefere was not
+right."
+
+"Yes, yes, she was quite right that time; but I wanted to love
+everybody who loved you--everybody without exception--and I cannot
+do it, because it would never be possible for me to love Mademoiselle
+Prefere."
+
+"Listen, Jeanne," I answered, very seriously, "Mademoiselle Prefere
+has become good to you; try now to be good to her."
+
+She answered sharply,
+
+"It is very easy for Mademoiselle Prefere to be good to me, and it
+would be very difficult indeed for me to be good to her."
+
+I then said, in a still more serious tone:
+
+"My child, the authority of a teacher is sacred.  You must consider
+your schoolmistress as occupying the place to you of the mother whom
+you lost."
+
+I had scarcely uttered this solemn stupidity when I bitterly regretted
+it.  The child turned pale, and the tears sprang to her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur!" she cried, "how could you say such a thing--YOU?
+You never knew mamma!"
+
+Ay, just Heaven!  I did know her mamma.  And how indeed could I have
+been foolish enough to have said what I did?
+
+She repeated, as if to herself:
+
+"Mamma! my dear mamma! my poor mamma!"
+
+A lucky chance prevented me from playing the fool any further.  I do
+not know how it happened at that moment I looked as if I was going
+to cry.  At my age one does not cry.  It must have been a bad cough
+which brought the tears into my eyes.  But, anyhow, appearances were
+in my favour.  Jeanne was deceived by them.  Oh! what a pure and
+radiant smile suddenly shone out under her beautiful wet eyelashes--
+like sunshine among branches after a summer shower!  We took each
+other by the hand and sat a long while without saying a word--
+absolutely happy.  Those celestial harmonies which I once thought
+I heard thrilling through my soul while I knelt before that tomb
+to which a saintly woman had guided me, suddenly awoke again in my
+heart, slow-swelling through the blissful moments with infinite
+softness.  Doubtless the child whose hand pressed my own also heard
+them; and then, elevated by their enchantment above the material
+world, the poor old man and the artless young girl both knew that a
+tender ghostly Presence was making sweetness all about them.
+
+"My child," I said at last, "I am very old, and many secrets of life,
+which you will only learn little by little, have been revealed to me.
+Believe me, the future is shaped out of the past.  Whatever you can
+do to live contentedly here, without impatience and without fretting,
+will help you live some future day in peace and joy in your own home.
+Be gentle, and learn how to suffer.  When one suffers patiently one
+suffers less.  If you should be badly treated, Madame de Gabry and
+I would both consider ourselves badly treated in your person."...
+
+"Is your health very good indeed, dear Monsieur?"
+
+It was Mademoiselle Prefere, approaching stealthily behind us, who
+had asked the question with a peculiar smile.  My first idea was to
+tell her to go to the devil; my second, that her mouth was as little
+suited for smiling as a frying-pan for musical purposes; my third
+was to answer her politely and assure her that I hoped she was very
+well.
+
+She sent the young girl out to take a walk in the garden; then,
+pressing one hand upon her pelerine and extending the other towards
+the Tableau d'Honneur, she showed me the name of Jeanne Alexandre
+written at the head of the list in large text.
+
+"I am very much pleased," I said to her, "to find that you are
+satisfied with the behaviour of that child.  Nothing could delight
+me more; and I am inclined to attribute this happy result to your
+affectionate vigilance.  I have taken the liberty to send you a few
+books which I think may serve both to instruct and to amuse young
+girls.  You will be able to judge by glancing over them whether
+they are adapted to the perusal of Mademoiselle Alexandre and her
+companions."
+
+The gratitude of the schoolmistress not only overflowed in words,
+but seemed about to take the form of tearful sensibility.  In order
+to change the subject I observed,
+
+"What a beautiful day this is!"
+
+"Yes," she replied; "and if this weather continues, those dear
+children will have a nice time for their enjoyment."
+
+"I suppose you are referring to the holidays.  But Mademoiselle
+Alexandre, who has no relatives, cannot go away.  What in the world
+is she going to do all alone in this great big house?"
+
+"Oh, we will do everything we can to amuse her....  I will take her
+to the museums and---"
+
+She hesitated, blushed, and continued,
+
+"--and to your house, if you will permit me."
+
+"Why of course!"  I exclaimed.  "That is a first-rate idea."
+
+We separated very good friends with one another.  I with her, because
+I had been able to obtain what I desired; she with me, for no
+appreciable motive--which fact, according to Plato, elevated her
+into the highest rank of the Hierarchy of Souls.
+
+...And nevertheless it is not without a presentiment of evil that I
+find myself on the point of introducing this person into my house.
+And I would be very glad indeed to see Jeanne in charge of anybody
+else rather than of her.  Maitre Mouche and Mademoiselle Prefere
+are characters whom I cannot at all understand.  I never can imagine
+why they say what they do say, nor why they do what they do; they
+have a mysterious something in common which makes me feel uneasy.
+As Jeanne said to me a little while ago:  "One is uneasy about
+what one cannot understand."
+
+Alas! at my age one has learned only too well how little sincerity
+there is in life; one has learned only too well how much one loses
+by living a long time in this world; and one feels that one can no
+longer trust any except the young.
+
+
+August 12.
+
+
+I waited for them.  In fact, I waited for them very impatiently.  I
+exerted all my powers of insinuation and of coaxing to induce Therese
+to receive them kindly; but my powers in this direction are very
+limited.  They came.  Jeanne was neater and prettier than I had ever
+expected to see her.  She has not, it is true, anything approaching
+the charm of her mother.  But to-day, for the first time, I observed
+that she has a pleasing face; and a pleasing face is of great
+advantage to a woman in this world.  I think that her hat was a
+little on one side; but she smiled, and the City of Books was all
+illuminated by that smile.
+
+I watched Therese to see whether the rigid manners of the old
+housekeeper would soften a little at the sight of the young girl.  I
+saw her turning her lustreless eyes upon Jeanne; I saw her long
+wrinkled face, her toothless mouth, and that pointed chin of hers--
+like the chin of some puissant old fairy.  And that was all I could
+see.
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere made her appearance all in blue--advanced,
+retreated, skipped, tripped, cried out, sighed, cast her eyes down,
+rolled her eyes up, bewildered herself with excuses--said she dared
+not, and nevertheless dared--said she would never dare again, and
+nevertheless dared again--made courtesies innumerable--made, in
+short, all the fuss she could.
+
+"What a lot of books!" she screamed.  "And have you really read them
+all, Monsieur Bonnard?"
+
+"Alas! I have," I replied, "and that is just the reason that I do not
+know anything; for there is not a single one of those books which
+does not contradict some other book; so that by the time one has
+read them all one does not know what to think about anything.  That
+is just my condition, Madame."
+
+Thereupon she called Jeanne for the purpose of communicating her
+impressions.  But Jeanne was looking out of the window.
+
+"How beautiful it is!" she said to us.  "How I love to see the river
+flowing!  It makes you think about all kinds of things."
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere having removed her hat and exhibited a forehead
+tricked out with blonde curls, my housekeeper sturdily snatched up
+the hat at once, with the observation that she did not like to see
+people's clothes scattered over the furniture.  Then she approached
+Jeanne and asked her for her "things," calling her "my little lady!"
+Where-upon the little lady, giving up her cloak and hat, exposed
+to view a very graceful neck and a lithe figure, whose outlines were
+beautifully relieved against the great glow of the open window;
+and I could have wished that some one else might have seen her at
+that moment--some one very different from an aged housekeeper, a
+schoolmistress frizzled like a sheep, and this old humbug of an
+archivist and paleographer.
+
+"So you are looking at the Seine," I said to her.  "See how it
+sparkles in the sun!"
+
+"Yes," she replied, leaning over the windowbar, "it looks like a
+flowing of fire.  But see how nice and cool it looks on the other
+side over there under the shadow of the willows!  That little spot
+there pleases me better than all the rest."
+
+"Good!" I answered.  "I see that the river has a charm for you.  How
+would you like, with Mademoiselle Prefere's permission, to make a
+trip to Saint-Cloud?  We should certainly be in time to catch
+the steamboat just below the Pont-Royal."
+
+Jeanne was delighted with my suggestion, and Mademoiselle Prefere
+willing to make any sacrifice.  But my housekeeper was not at all
+willing to let us go off so unconcernedly.  She summoned me into
+the dining-room, whither I followed her in fear and trembling.
+
+"Monsieur," she said to me as soon as we found ourselves alone, "you
+never think about anything, and it is always I who have to think
+about everything.  Luckily for you I have a good memory."
+
+I did not think that it was a favourable moment for any attempt to
+dispel this wild illusion.  She continued:
+
+"So you were going off without saying a word to me about what this
+little lady likes to eat?  At her age one does not know anything,
+one does not care about anything in particular, one eats like a
+bird.  You yourself, Monsieur, are very difficult to please; but
+at least you know what is good:  it is very different with these
+young people--they do not know anything about cooking.  It is often
+the very best thing which they think the worst, and what is bad
+seems to them good, because their stomachs are not quite formed
+yet--so that one never knows just what to do for them.  Tell me if
+the little lady would like a pigeon cooked with green peas, and
+whether she is fond of vanilla ice-cream."
+
+"My good Therese," I answered, "just do whatever you think best, and
+whatever that may be I am sure it will be very nice.  Those ladies
+will be quite contented with our humble ordinary fare."
+
+Therese replied, very dryly,
+
+"Monsieur, I am asking you about the little lady:  she must not
+leave this house without having enjoyed herself a little.  As for
+that old frizzle-headed thing, if she doesn't like my dinner she
+can suck her thumbs.  I don't care what she likes!"
+
+My mind being thus set at rest, I returned to the City of Books,
+where Mademoiselle Prefere was crocheting as calmly as if she were
+at home.  I almost felt inclined myself to think she was.  She did
+not take up much room, it is true, in the angle of the window.  But
+she had chosen her chair and her footstool so well that those
+articles of furniture seemed to have been made expressly for her.
+
+Jeanne, on the other hand, devoted her attention to the books and
+pictures--gazing at them in a kindly, expressive, half-sad way, as
+if she were bidding them an affectionate farewell.
+
+"Here," I said to her, "amuse yourself with this book, which I am
+sure you cannot help liking, because it is full of beautiful
+engravings."  And I threw open before her Vecellio's collection of
+costume-designs--not the commonplace edition, by your leave, so
+meagrely reproduced by modern artists, but in truth a magnificent
+and venerable copy of that editio princeps which is noble as
+those noble dames who figure upon its yellowed leaves, made
+beautiful by time.
+
+While turning over the engravings with artless curiousity, Jeanne
+said to me,
+
+"We were talking about taking a walk; but this is a great journey
+you are making me take.  And I would like to travel very, very far
+away!"
+
+"In that case, Mademoiselle," I said to her, "you must arrange
+yourself as comfortably as possible for travelling.  But you are now
+sitting on one corner of your chair, so that the chair is standing
+upon only one leg, and that Vecellio must tire your knees.  Sit
+down comfortably; put your chair on its four feet, and put your
+book on the table."
+
+She obeyed me with a laugh.
+
+I watched her.  She cried out suddenly,
+
+"Oh, come look at this beautiful costume!"  (It was that of the wife
+of a Doge of Venice.)  "How noble it is!  What magnificent ideas it
+gives one of that life!  Oh, I must tell you--I adore luxury!"
+
+"You must not express such thoughts as those, Mademoiselle," said
+the schoolmistress, lifting up her little shapeless nose from her
+work.
+
+"Nevertheless, it was a very innocent utterance," I replied.  "There
+are splendid souls in whom the love of splendid things is natural
+and inborn."
+
+The little shapeless nose went down again.
+
+"Mademoiselle Prefere likes luxury too," said Jeanne; "she cuts out
+paper trimmings and shades for the lamps.  It is economical luxury;
+but it is luxury all the same."
+
+Having returned to the subject of Venice, we were just about to make
+the acquaintance of a certain patrician lady attired in an embroidered
+dalmatic, when I heard the bell ring.  I thought it was some peddler
+with his basket; but the gate of the City of Books opened, and...Well,
+Master Sylvestre Bonnard, you were wishing awhile ago that the grace
+of your protegee might be observed by some other eyes than old
+withered ones behind spectacles.  Your wishes have been fulfilled
+in a most unexpected manner, and a voice cries out to you as to the
+imprudent Theseus,
+
+"Craignez, Seigneur, craignez que le Ciel rigoureux
+ Ne vous Haisse assez pour exaucer vos voeux!
+ Souvent dans sa colere il recoit nos victimes,
+ Ses presents sont souvent la peine de nos crimes."
+
+["Beware my lord! Beware lest stern Heaven
+  hate you enough to hear your prayers!
+  Often 'tis in wrath that Heaven receives our sacrifices:
+  its gifts are often the punishment of our crimes."]
+
+The gate of the City of Books had opened, and a handsome young man
+made his appearance, ushered in by Therese.  That good old soul only
+knows how to open the door for people and to shut it behind them;
+she has no idea whatever of the tact requisite for the waiting-
+room and for the parlour.  It is not in her nature either to make
+any announcements or to make anybody wait.  She either throws people
+out on the lobby, or simply pitches them at your head.
+
+And here is this handsome young man already inside; and I cannot
+really take the girl at once and hide her like a secret treasure in
+the next room.  I wait for him to explain himself; he does it without
+the least embarrassment; but it seems to me that he has already
+observed the young girl who is still bending over the table looking
+at Vecellio.  As I observe the young man it occurs to me that I have
+seen him somewhere before, or else I must be very much mistaken.
+His name is Gelis.  That is a name which I have heard somewhere,--I
+can't remember where.  At all events, Monsieur Gelis (since there
+is a Gelis) is a fine-looking young fellow.  He tells me that this
+is his third class-year at the Ecole des Chartes, and that he has
+been working for the past fifteen or eighteen months upon his
+graduation thesis, the subject of which is the Condition of the
+Benedictine Abbeys in 1700.  He has just read my works upon the
+"Monasticon"; and he is convinced that he cannot terminate this
+thesis successfully without my advice, to begin with, and in the
+second place without a certain manuscript which I possess, and
+which is nothing less than the "Register of the Accounts of the
+Abbey of Citeaux from 1683 to 1704."
+
+Having thus explained himself, he hands me a letter of introduction
+bearing the signature of one of the most illustrious of my
+colleagues.
+
+Good!  Now I know who he is!  Monsieur Gelis is the very same young
+man who last year under the chestnut-trees called me an idiot!  And
+while unfolding his letter of introduction I think to myself:
+
+"Aha! my unlucky youth, you are very far from suspecting that I
+overheard what you said, and that I know what you think of me--or,
+at least, what you did think of me that day, for these young minds
+are so fickle?  I have got you now, my friend!  You have fallen into
+the lion's den, and so unexpectedly, in good sooth, that the
+astonished old lion does not know what to do with his prey.  But
+come now, old lion! do not act like an idiot!  Is it not possible
+that you were an idiot?  If you are not one now, you certainly
+were one!  You were a fool to have been listening to Monsieur Gelis
+at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de Valois; you were doubly
+a fool to have heard what he said; and you were trebly a fool not
+to have forgotten what it would have been much better never to have
+heard."
+
+Having thus scolded the old lion, I exhorted him to show clemency.
+He did not appear to require much coaxing, and gradually became so
+good-natured that he had some difficulty in restraining himself
+from bursting out into joyous roarings.  From the way in which I
+had read my colleague's letter one might have supposed me a man who
+did not know his alphabet.  I took a long while to read it; and
+Monsieur Gelis might have become very tired under different
+circumstances; but he was watching Jeanne, and endured the trial
+with exemplary patience.  Jeanne occasionally turned her face in
+our direction.  Well you could not expect a person to remain
+perfectly motionless, could you?  Mademoiselle Prefere was arranging
+her curls, and her bosom occasionally swelled with little sighs.
+It may be observed that I have myself often been honoured with
+those little sighs.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, as I folded up the letter, "I shall be very happy
+to be of any service to you.  You are occupied with researches in
+which I myself have always felt a very lively interest.  I have
+done all that lay in my power.  I know, as you do--and still better
+than you can know--how much there remains to do.  The manuscript
+you asked for is at your disposal; you may take it home with you,
+but it is not a manuscript of the smallest kind, and I am afraid---"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur," said Gelis, "big books have never been able to make
+me afraid of them."
+
+I begged the young man to wait for me, and I went into the next room
+to get the Register, which I could not find at first, and which I
+almost despaired of finding, as I discerned, from certain familiar
+signs, that Therese had been setting the room in order.  But the
+Register was so big and so heavy that, luckily for me, Therese had
+not been able to put it in order as she had doubtless wished to do.
+I could scarcely lift it up myself; and I had the pleasure of
+finding it quite as heavy as I could have hoped.
+
+"Wait, my boy," I said, with a smile which must have been very
+sarcastic--"wait!  I am going to give you something to do which
+will break your arms first, and afterwards your head.  That will
+be the first vengeance of Sylvestre Bonnard.  Later on we shall see
+what else there is to be done."
+
+When I returned to the City of Books I heard Monsieur Gelis and
+Mademoiselle Jeanne chatting--chatting together, if you please! as
+if they were the best friends in the world.  Mademoiselle Prefere,
+being full of decorum, did not say anything; but the other two were
+chatting like birds.  And what about?  About the blond tint used by
+Venetian painters!  Yes, about the "Venetian blond."  That little
+serpent of a Gelis was telling Jeanne the secret of the dye with
+which, according to the best authorities, the women of Titian and
+of Veronese tinted their hair.  And Mademoiselle Jeanne was expressing
+her opinion very prettily about the honey tint and the golden tint.
+I understood that that scamp of a Vecellio was responsible--that
+they had been bending over the book together, and that they had been
+admiring either that Doge's wife we had been looking at awhile before,
+or some other patrician woman of Venice.
+
+Never mind!  I appeared with my enormous old book, thinking that
+Gelis was going to make a grimace.  It was as much as one could have
+asked a porter to carry, and my arms were stiff merely with lifting
+it.  But the young man caught it up like a feather, and slipped it
+under his arm with a smile.  Then he thanked me with that sort of
+brevity which I like, reminded me that he had need of my advice, and,
+having made an appointment to meet me another day, took his departure
+after bowing to us with the most perfect self-possession conceivable.
+
+"He seems quite a decent lad," I said.
+
+Jeanne turned over a few more pages of Vecellio, and made no answer.
+
+"Aha!" I thought to myself....  And then we went to Saint-Cloud.
+
+
+September-December.
+
+
+The regularity with which visit succeeded visit to the old man's
+house thereafter made me feel very grateful to Mademoiselle Prefere,
+who succeeded at last in winning her right to occupy a special corner
+in the City of Books.  She now says "MY chair," "MY footstool,"
+"MY pigeon hole."  Her pigeon hole is really a small shelf properly
+belonging to the poets of La Champagne, whom she expelled therefrom
+in order to obtain a lodging for her work-bag.  She is very amiable,
+and I must really be a monster not to like her.  I can only endure
+her--in the severest signification of the word.  But what would one
+not endure for Jeanne's sake?  Her presence lends to the City of
+Books a charm which seems to hover about it even after she has gone.
+She is very ignorant; but she is so finely gifted that whenever I
+show her anything beautiful I am astounded to find that I had never
+really seen it before, and that it is she who makes me see it.  I
+have found it impossible so far to make her follow some of my ideas,
+but I have often found pleasure in following the whimsical and
+delicate course of her own.
+
+A more practical man than I would attempt to teach her to make herself
+useful; but is not the capacity of being amiable a useful think in
+life?  Without being pretty, she charms; and the power to charm is
+perhaps, after all, worth quite as much as the ability to darn
+stockings.  Furthermore, I am not immortal; and I doubt whether she
+will have become very old when my notary (who is not Maitre Mouche)
+shall read to her a certain paper which I signed a little while ago.
+
+I do not wish that any one except myself should provide for her,
+and give her her dowry.  I am not, however, very rich, and the
+paternal inheritance did not gain bulk in my hands.  One does not
+accumulate money by poring over old texts.  But my books--at the
+price which such noble merchandise fetches to-day--are worth
+something.  Why, on that shelf there are some poets of the sixteenth
+century for which bankers would bid against princes!  And I think
+that those "Heures" of Simon Vostre would not be readily overlooked
+at the Hotel Sylvestre any more than would those Preces Piae
+compiled for the use of Queen Claude.  I have taken great pains to
+collect and to preserve all those rare and curious editions which
+people the City of Books; and for a long time I used to believe that
+they were as necessary to my life as air and light.  I have loved
+them well, and even now I cannot prevent myself from smiling at them
+and caressing them.  Those morocco bindings are so delightful to the
+eye!  These old vellums are so soft to the touch!  There is not a
+single one among those books which is not worthy, by reason of some
+special merit, to command the respect of an honourable man.  What
+other owner would ever know how to dip into hem in the proper way?
+Can I be even sure that another owner would not leave them to decay
+in neglect, or mutilate them at the prompting of some ignorant whim?
+Into whose hands will fall that incomparable copy of the "Histoire
+de l'Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Pres," on the margins of which the
+author himself, in the person of Jacques Bouillard, made such
+substantial notes in his own handwriting?...  Master Bonnard, you
+are an old fool!  Your housekeeper--poor soul!--is nailed down upon
+her bed with a merciless attack of rheumatism.  Jeanne is to come
+with her chaperon, and, instead of thinking how you are going to
+receive them, you are thinking about a thousand stupidities.
+Sylvestre Bonnard, you will never succeed at anything in this world,
+and it is I myself who tell you so!
+
+And at this very moment I catch sight of them from my window, as they
+get out of the omnibus.  Jeanne leaps down lie a kitten; but
+Mademoiselle Prefere intrusts herself to the strong arm of the
+conductor, with the shy grace of a Virginia recovering after the
+shipwreck, and this time quite resigned to being saved.  Jeanne
+looks up, sees me, laughs, and Mademoiselle Prefere has to prevent
+her from waving her umbrella at me as a friendly signal.  There is
+a certain stage of cvilisation to which Mademoiselle Jeanne never
+can be brought.  You can teach her all the arts if you like (it is
+not exactly to Mademoiselle Prefere that I am now speaking); but you
+will never be able to teach her perfect manners.  As a charming child
+she makes the mistake of being charming only in her own way.  Only
+an old fool like myself could forgive her pranks.  As for young
+fools--and there are several of them still to be found--I do not know
+what they would think about it; and what they might think is none
+of my business.  Just look at her running along the pavement, wrapped
+in her cloak, with her hat tilted back on her head, and her feather
+fluttering in the wind, like a schooner in full rig!  And really she
+has a grace of poise and motion which suggests a fine sailing-vessel--
+so much so, indeed, that she makes me remember seeing one day, when
+I was at Havre....  But, Bonnard, my friend, how many times is it
+necessary to tell you that your housekeeper is in bed, and that you
+must go and open the door yourself?
+
+Open, Old Man Winter! 'tis Spring who rings the bell.
+
+It is Jeanne herself--Jeanne is all flushed like a rose.  Mademoiselle
+Prefere, indignant and out of breath, has still another whole flight
+to climb before reaching our lobby.
+
+I explained the condition of my housekeeper, and proposed that we
+should dine at a restaurant.  But Therese--all-powerful still, even
+upon her sick-bed--decided that we should dine at home, whether we
+wanted to or no.  Respectable people, in her opinion, never dined
+at restaurants.  Moreover, she had made all necessary arrangements--
+the dinner had been bought; the concierge would cook it.
+
+The audacious Jeanne insisted upon going to see whether the old woman
+wanted anything.  As you might suppose, she was sent back to the
+parlour with short shrift, but not so harshly as I had feared.
+
+"If I want anybody to do anything for me, which, thank God, I do not,"
+Therese had replied, "I would get somebody less delicate and dainty
+than you are.  What I want is rest.  That is a merchandise which is
+not sold at fairs under the sign of 'Motus with finger on lip.'  Go
+and have your fun, and don't stay here--for old age might be
+catching."
+
+Jeanne, after telling us what she had said, added that she liked very
+much to hear old Therese talk.  Whereupon Mademoiselle Prefere
+reproached her for expressing such unladylike tastes.
+
+I tried to excuse her by citing the example of Moliere.  Just at that
+moment it came to pass that, while climbing the ladder to get a
+book, she upset a whole shelf-row.  There was a heavy crash; and
+Mademoiselle Prefere, being, of course, a very delicate person,
+almost fainted.  Jeanne quickly followed the books to the foot of
+the ladder.  she made one think of a kitten suddenly transformed into
+a woman, catching mice which had been transformed into old books.
+While picking them up, she found one which happened to interest her,
+and she began to read it, squatting down upon her heels.  It was the
+"Prince Grenouille," she told us.  Mademoiselle Prefere took occasion
+to complain that Jeanne had so little taste for poetry.  It was
+impossible to get her to recite Casimir Delavigne's poem on the death
+of Joan of Arc without mistakes.  It was the very most she could do
+to learn "Le Petit Savoyard."  The schoolmistress did not think that
+any one should read the "Prince Grenouille" before learning by heart
+the stanzas to Duperrier; and, carried away by her enthusiasm, she
+began to recite them in a voice sweeter than the bleating of a sheep:
+
+"  Ta douleur, Duperrier, sera donc eternelle,
+     Et les tristes discours
+   Que te met en l'esprit l'amitie paternelle
+     L'augmenteront toujours;
+
+.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+"  Je sais de quels appas son enfance etait pleine,
+     Et n'ai pas entrepris,
+   Injurieux ami, de consoler ta peine
+     Avecque son mepris."
+
+Then in ecstacy, she exclaimed,
+
+"How beautiful that is!  What harmony!  How is it possible for any
+one not to admire such exquisite, such touching verses!  But why
+did Malherbe call that poor Monsieur Duperrier his injurieux ami
+at a time when he had been so severely tied by the death of his
+daughter?  Injurieux ami--you must acknowledge that the term is
+very harsh."
+
+I explained to this poetical person that the phrase "Injurieux ami,"
+which shocked her so much, was in apposition, etc. etc.  What I said,
+however, had so little effect towards clearing her head that she was
+seized with a severe and prolonged fit of sneezing.  Meanwhile it
+was evident that the history of "Prince Grenouille" had proved
+extremely funny; for it was all that Jeanne could do, as she crouched
+down there on the carpet, to keep herself from bursting into a wild
+fit of laughter.  But when she had finished with the prince and
+princess of the story, and the multitude of their children, she
+assumed a very suppliant expression, and begged me as a great favour
+to allow her to put on a white apron and go to the kitchen to help
+in getting the dinner ready.
+
+"Jeanne," I replied, with the gravity of a master, "I think that if
+it is a question of breaking plates, knocking off the edges of
+dishes, denting all the pans, and smashing all the skimmers, the
+person whom Therese has set to work in the kitchen already will be
+able to perform her task without assistance; for it seems to me at
+this very moment I can hear disastrous noises in that kitchen.  But
+anyhow, Jeanne, I will charge you with the duty of preparing the
+dessert.  So go and get your white apron; I will tie it on for you."
+
+Accordingly, I solemnly knotted the linen apron about her waist; and
+she rushed into the kitchen, where she proceeded at once--as we
+discovered later on--to prepare various dishes unknown to Vatel,
+unknown even to that great Careme who began his treatise upon pieces
+montees with these words: "The Fine Arts are five in number:
+Painting, Music, Poetry, Sculpture, and Architecture--whereof the
+principal branch is Confectionery."  But I had no reason to be pleased
+with this little arrangement--for Mademoiselle Prefere, on finding
+herself alone with me, began to act after a fashion which filled me
+with frightful anxiety.  She gazed upon me with eyes full of tears
+and flames, and uttered enormous sighs.
+
+"Oh, how I pity you!" she said.  "A man like you--a man so superior
+as you are--having to live alone with a coarse servant (for she is
+certainly coarse, that is incontestable)!  How cruel such a life
+must be!  You have need of repose--you have need of comfort, of
+care, of every kind of attention; you might fall sick.  And yet
+there is no woman who would not deem it an honour to bear your name,
+and to share your existence.  No, there is none; my own heart tells
+me so."
+
+And she squeezed both hands over that heart of hers--always so ready
+to fly away.
+
+I was driven almost to distraction.  I tried to make Mademoiselle
+Prefere comprehend that I had no intention whatever of changing my
+habits at so advanced an age, and that I found just as much
+happiness in life as my character and my circumstances rendered
+possible.
+
+"No, you are not happy!" she cried.  "You need to have always beside
+you a mind capable of comprehending your own.  Shake off your
+lethargy, and cast your eyes about you.  Your professional connections
+are of the most extended character, and you must have charming
+acquaintances.  One cannot be a Member of the Institute without going
+into society.  See, judge, compare.  No sensible woman would refuse
+you her hand.  I am a woman, Monsieur; my instinct never deceives
+me--there is something within me which assures me that you would find
+happiness in marriage.  Women are so devoted, so loving (not all, of
+course, but some)!  And, then, they are so sensitive to glory.
+Remember that at your age one has need, like Oedipus, of an Egeria!
+Your cook is no longer able--she is deaf, she is infirm.  If anything
+should happen to you at night!  Oh! it makes me shudder even to think
+of it!"
+
+And she really shuddered--she closed her eyes, clenched her hands,
+stamped on the floor.  Great was my dismay.  With awful intensity
+she resumed,
+
+"Your health--your dear health!  The health of a Member of the
+Institute!  How joyfully I would shed the very last drop of my blood
+to preserve the life of a scholar, of a litterateur, of a man of
+worth.  And any woman who would not do as much, I should despise her!
+Let me tell you, Monsieur--I used to know the wife of a great
+mathematician, a man who used to fill whole note-books with
+calculations--so many note-books that they filled all the cupboards
+in the house.  He had heart-disease, and he was visibly pining away.
+And I saw that wife of his, sitting there beside him, perfectly calm!
+I could not endure it.  I said to her one day, 'My dear, you have no
+heart!  If I were in your place I should...I should...I do not know
+what I should do!'"
+
+She paused for want of breath.  My situation was terrible.  As for
+telling Mademoiselle Prefere what I really thought about her advice--
+that was something which I could not even dream of daring to do.
+For to fall out with her was to lose the chance of seeing Jeanne.
+So I resolved to take the matter quietly.  In any case, she was in
+my house:  that consideration helped me to treat her with something
+of courtesy.
+
+"I am very old, Mademoiselle," I answered her, "and I am very much
+afraid that your advice comes to me rather late in life.  Still, I
+will think about it.  In the meanwhile let me beg of you to be
+calm.  I think a glass of eau sucree would do you good!"
+
+To my great surprise, these words calmed her at once; and I saw her
+sit down very quietly in HER corner, close to HER pigeon-hole,
+upon HER chair, with her feet upon HER footstool.
+
+The dinner was a complete failure.  Mademoiselle Prefere, who seemed
+lost in a brown study, never noticed the fact.  As a rule I am very
+sensitive about such misfortunes; but this one caused Jeanne so
+much delight that at last I could not help enjoying it myself.  Even
+at my age I had not been able to learn before that a chicken, raw
+on one side and burned on the other, was a funny thing; but Jeanne's
+bursts of laughter taught me that it was.  That chicken caused us to
+say a thousand very witty things, which I have forgotten; and I was
+enchanted that it had not been properly cooked.  Jeanne put it back
+to roast again; then she broiled it; then she stewed it with butter.
+And every time it came back to the table it was much less appetising
+and much more mirth-provoking than before.  When we did eat it, at
+last, it had become a thing for which there is no name in any
+cuisine.
+
+The almond cake was much more extraordinary.  It was brought to the
+table in the pan, because it never could have got out of it.  I
+invited Jeanne to help us all to a piece thinking that I was going
+to embarrass her; but she broke the pan and gave each of us a
+fragment.  To think that anybody at my age could eat such things was
+an idea possible only to the very artless mind.  Mademoiselle Prefere,
+suddenly awakened from her dream, indignantly pushed away the sugary
+splinter of earthenware, and deemed it opportune to inform me that
+she herself was exceedingly skilful in making confectionery.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Jeanne, with an air of surprise not altogether without
+malice.  Then she wrapped all the fragments of the pan in a piece of
+paper, for the purpose of giving them to her little playmates--
+especially to the three little Mouton girls, who are naturally
+inclined to gluttony.
+
+Secretly, however, I was beginning to feel very uneasy.  It did not
+now seem in any way possible to keep much longer upon good terms
+with Mademoiselle Prefere since her matrimonial fury had this burst
+forth.  And that lady affronted, good-bye to Jeanne!  I took advantage
+of a moment while the sweet soul was busy putting on her cloak, in
+order to ask Jeanne to tell me exactly what her own age was.  She
+was eighteen years and one month old.  I counted on my fingers, and
+found she would not come of age for another two years and eleven
+months.  And how should we be able to manage during all that time?
+
+At the door Mademoiselle Prefere squeezed my hand with so much
+meaning that I fairly shook from head to foot.
+
+"Good-bye," I said very gravely to the young girl.  "But listen to
+me a moment:  your friend is very old, and might perhaps fail you
+when you need him most.  Promise me never to fail in your duty to
+yourself, and then I shall have no fear.  God keep you, my child!"
+
+After closing the door behind them, I opened the window to get a
+last look at her as she was going away.  But the night was dark,
+and I could see only two vague shadows flitting across the quay. 
+I heard the vast deep hom of the city rising up about me; and I
+suddenly felt a great sinking at my heart.
+
+Poor child!
+
+
+December 15.
+
+
+The King of Thule kept a goblet of gold which his dying mistress
+had bequeathed him as a souvenir.  When about to die himself, after
+having drunk from it for the last time, he threw the goblet into the
+sea.  And I keep this diary of memories even as that old prince of
+the mist-haunted seas kept his carven goblet; and even as he flung
+away at last his love-pledge, so will I burn this book of souvenirs.
+Assuredly it is not through any arrogant avarice nor through any
+egotistical pride, that I shall destroy this record of a humble
+life--it is only because I fear lest those things which are dear and
+sacred to me might appear before others, because of my inartistic
+manner of expression, either commonplace or absurd.
+
+I do not say this in view of what is going to follow.  Absurd I
+certainly must have been when, having been invited to dinner by
+Mademoiselle Prefere, I took my seat in a bergere (it was really
+a bergere) at the right hand of that alarming person.  The table
+had been set in a little parlour; and I could observe from the poor
+way in which it was set out that the schoolmistress was one of those
+ethereal souls who soar above terrestrial things.  Chipped plates,
+unmatched glasses, knives with loose handles, forks with yellow
+prongs--there was absolutely nothing wanting to spoil the appetite
+of an honest man.
+
+I was assured that the dinner had been cooked for me--for me alone--
+although Maitre Mouche had also been invited.  Mademoiselle Prefere
+must have imagined that I had Sarmatian tastes on the subject of
+butter; for that which she offered me, served up in little thin pats,
+was excessively rancid.
+
+The roast very nearly poisoned me.  But I had the pleasure of hearing
+Maitre Mouche and Mademoiselle Prefere discourse upon virtue.  I
+said the pleasure--I ought to have said the shame; for the sentiments
+to which they gave expression soared far beyond the range of my
+vulgar nature.
+
+What they said proved to me as clear as day that devotedness was their
+daily bread, and that self-sacrifice was not less necessary to their
+existence than air and water.  Observing that I was not eating,
+Mademoiselle Prefere made a thousand efforts to overcome that which
+she was good enough to term my "discretion."  Jeanne was not of the
+party, because, I was told, her presence at it would have been
+contrary to the rules, and would have wounded the feelings of the
+other school-children, among whom it was necessary to maintian a
+certain equality.  I secretly congratulated her upon having escaped
+from the Merovingian butter; from the huge radishes, empty as funeral-
+urns; form the leathery roast, and from various other curiosities of
+diet to which I had exposed myself for the love of her.
+
+The extremely disconsolate-looking servant served up some liquid to
+which they gave the name of cream--I do not know why--and vanished
+away like a ghost.
+
+Then Mademoiselle Prefere related to Maitre Mouche, with extraordinary
+transports of emotion, all that she had said to me in the City of
+Books, during the time that my housekeeper was sick in bed.  Her
+admiration for a Member of the Institute, her terror lest I should
+be taken ill while unattended, and the certainty she felt that any
+intelligent woman would be proud and happy to share my existence--she
+concealed nothing, but, on the contrary, added many fresh follies to
+the recital.  Maitre Mouche kept nodding his head in approval while
+cracking nuts.  Then, after all this verbiage, he demanded, with
+an agreeable smile, what my answer had been.
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere, pressing her hand upon her heart and extending
+the other towards me, cried out,
+
+"He is so affectionate, so superior, so good, and so great!  He
+answered...  But I could never, because I am only a humble woman--I
+could never repeat the words of a Member of the Institute.  I can
+only utter the substance of them.  He answered, 'Yes, I understand
+you--yes.'"
+
+And with these words she reached out and seized one of my hands.
+Then Maitre Mouche, also overwhelmed with emotion, arose and seized
+my other hand.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "permit me to offer my congratulations."
+
+Several times in my life I have known fear; but never before had I
+experienced any fright of so nauseating a character.  A sickening
+terror came upon me.
+
+I disengaged by two hands, and, rising to my feet, so as to give all
+possible seriousness to my words, I said,
+
+"Madame, either I explained myself very badly when you were at my
+house, or I have totally misunderstood you here in your own.  In
+either case, a positive declaration is absolutely necessary.  Permit
+me, Madame, to make it now, very plainly.  No--I never did understand
+you; I am totally ignorant of the nature of this marriage project
+that you have been planning for me--if you really have been planning
+one.  In any event, I should not think of marrying.  It would be
+unpardonable folly at my age, and even now, at this moment, I
+cannot conceive how a sensible person like you could ever have advised
+me to marry.  Indeed, I am strongly inclined to believe that I must
+have been mistaken, and that you never said anything of the kind
+before.  In the latter case, please excuse an old man totally
+unfamiliar with the usages of society, unaccustomed to the
+conversation of ladies, and very contrite for his mistake."
+
+Maitre Mouche went back very softly to his place, where, not finding
+any more nuts to crack, he began to whittle a cork.
+
+Mademoiselle Prefere, after staring at me for a few moments with an
+expression in her little round dry eyes which I had never seen there
+before, suddenly resumed her customary sweetness and graciousness.
+Then she cried out in honeyed tones,
+
+"Oh! these learned men!--these studious men!  They are like children.
+Yes, Monsieur Bonnard, you are a real child!"
+
+Then, turning to the notary, who still sat very quietly in his corner,
+with his nose over his cork, she exclaimed, in beseeching tones,
+
+"Oh, do not accuse him!  Do not accuse him!  Do not think any evil
+of him, I beg of you!  Do not think it at all!  Must I ask you upon
+my knees?"
+
+Maitre Mouche continued to examine all the various aspects and
+surfaces of his cork without making any further manifestation.
+
+I was very indignant; and I know that my cheeks must have been
+extremely red, if I could judge by the flush of heat which I felt
+rise to my face.  This would enable me to explain the words I
+heard through all the buzzing in my ears:
+
+"I am frightened about him! our poor friend!... Monsieur Mouche, be
+kind enough to open a window!  It seems to me that a compress of
+arnica would do him some good."
+
+I rushed out into the street with an unspeakable feeling of shame.
+
+"My poor Jeanne!"
+
+
+December 20.
+
+
+I passed eight days without hearing anything further in regard to
+the Prefere establishment.  Then, feeling myself unable to remain
+any longer without some news of Clementine's daughter, and feeling
+furthermore that I owed it as a duty to myself not to cease my visits
+with the school without more serious cause, I took my way to Les
+Ternes.
+
+the parlour seemed to me more cold, more damp, more inhospitable,
+and more insidious than ever before; and the servant much more
+silent and much more scared.  I asked to see Mademoiselle Jeanne;
+but, after a very considerable time, it was Mademoiselle Prefere
+who made her appearance instead--severe and pale, with lips compressed
+and a hard look in her eyes.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, folding her arms over her pelerine, I regret
+very much that I cannot allow you to see Mademoiselle Alexandre to-
+day; but I cannot possibly do it."
+
+"Why not?" I asked in astonishment.
+
+"Monsieur," she replied, "the reasons which compel me to request that
+your visits shall be less frequent hereafter are of an excessively
+delicate nature; and I must beg you to spare me the unpleasantness
+of mentioning them."
+
+"Madame," I replied, "I have been authorized by Jeanne's guardian
+to see his ward every day.  Will you please to inform me of your
+reasons for opposing the will of Monsieur Mouche?"
+
+"The guardian of Mademoiselle Alexandre," she replied (and she
+dwelt upon that word "guardian" as upon a solid support), "desires,
+quite as strongly as I myself do, that your assiduities may come
+to an end as soon as possible."
+
+"Then, if that be the case," I said, "be kind enough to let me know
+his reasons and your own."
+
+She looked up at the little spiral of paper on the ceiling, and then
+replied, with stern composure,
+
+"You insist upon it?  Well, although such explanations are very
+painful for a woman to make, I will yield to your exaction.  This
+house, Monsieur is an honourable house.  I have my responsibility.
+I have to watch like a mother over each one of my pupils.  Your
+assiduities in regard to Mademoiselle Alexandre could not possibly
+be continued without serious injury to the young girl herself; and
+it is my duty to insist that they shall cease."
+
+"I do not really understand you," I replied--and I was telling the
+plain truth.  Then she deliberately resumed:
+
+"Your assiduities in this house are being interpreted, by the most
+respectable and the least suspicious persons, in such a manner that
+I find myself obliged, both in the interest of my establishment and
+in the interest of Mademoiselle Alexandre, to see that they end at
+once."
+
+"Madame," I cried, "I have heard a great many silly things in my
+life, but never anything so silly as what you have just said!"
+
+She answered me quietly,
+
+"Your words of abuse will not affect me in the slightest.  When one
+has a duty to accomplish, one is strong enough to endure all."
+
+And she pressed her pelerine over her heart once more--not perhaps
+on this occasion to restrain, but doubtless only to caress that
+generous heart.
+
+"Madame," I said, shaking my finger at her, "you have wantonly
+aroused the indignation of an aged man.  Be good enough to act in
+such a fashion that the old man may be able at least to forget your
+existence, and do not add fresh insults to those which I have already
+sustained from your lips.  I give you fair warning that I shall never
+cease to look after Mademoiselle Alexandre; and that should you
+attempt to do her any harm, in any manner whatsoever, you will have
+serious reason to regret it!"
+
+The more I became excited, the more she became cool; and she answered
+in a tone of superb indifference:
+
+"Monsieur, I am much too well informed in regard to the nature of
+the interest which you take in this young girl, not to withdraw her
+immediately from that very surveillance with which you threaten me.
+After observing the more than equivocal intimacy in which you are
+living with your housekeeper, I ought to have taken measures at
+once to render it impossible for you ever to come into contact with
+an innocent child.  In the future I shall certainly do it.  If up to
+this time I have been too trustful, it is for Mademoiselle Alexandre,
+and not for you, to reproach me with it.  But she is too artless and
+too pure--thanks to me!--ever to have suspected the nature of that
+danger into which you were trying to lead her.  I scarecly suppose
+that you will place me under the necessity of enlightening her upon
+the subject."
+
+"Come, my poor old Bonnard," I said to myself, as I shrugged my
+shoulders--"so you had to live as long as this in order to learn for
+the first time exactly what a wicked woman is.  And now your knowledge
+of the subject is complete."
+
+I went out without replying; and I had the pleasure of observing,
+from the sudden flush which overspread the face of the schoolmistress,
+that my silence had wounded her far more than my words.
+
+As I passed through the court I looked about me in every direction
+for Jeanne.  She was watching for me, and she ran to me.
+
+"If anybody touches one little hair of your head, Jeanne, write to
+me!  Good-bye!"
+
+"No, not good-bye."
+
+I replied,
+
+"Well, no--not good-bye!  Write to me!"
+
+
+I went straight to Madame de Gabry's residence.
+
+"Madame is at Rome with Monsieur.  Did not Monsieur know it?"
+
+"Why, yes," I replied.  "Madame wrote to me."...
+
+She had indeed written to me in regard to her leaving home; but my
+head must have become very much confused, so that I had forgotten
+all about it.  The servant seemed to be of the same opinion, for
+he looked at me in a way that seemed to signify, "Monsieur Bonnard
+is doting"--and he leaned down over the balustrade of the stairway
+to see if I was not going to do something extraordinary before I
+got to the bottom.  But I descended the stairs rationally enough;
+and then he drew back his head in disappointment.
+
+On returning home I was informed that Monsieur Gelis was waiting for
+me in the parlour.  (This young man has become a constant visitor.
+His judgement is at fault at times; but his mind is not at all
+commonplace.)  On this occasion, however, his usually welcome visit
+only embarrassed me.  "Alas!" I thought to myself, "I shall be sure
+to say something very stupid to my young friend to-day, and he
+also will think that my facilities are becoming impaired.  But still
+I cannot really explain to him that I had first been demanded in
+wedlock, and subsequently traduced as a man wholly devoid of morals--
+that even Therese had become an object of suspicion--and that Jeanne
+remains in the power of the most rascally woman on the face of the
+earth.  I am certainly in an admirable state of mind for conversing
+about Cistercian abbeys with a young and mischievously minded man.
+Nevertheless, we shall see--we shall try."...
+
+But Therese stopped me:
+
+"How red you are, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in a tone of reproach.
+
+"It must be the spring," I answered.
+
+She cried out,
+
+"The spring!--in the month of December?"
+
+That is a fact! this is December.  Ah! what is the matter with my
+head? what a fine help I am going to be to poor Jeanne!
+
+"Therese, take my cane; and put it, if you possibly can, in some
+place where I shall be able to find it again.
+
+"Good-day, Monsieur Gelis.  How are you?"
+
+
+Undated.
+
+
+Next morning the old boy wanted to get up; but the old boy could
+not get up.  A merciless invisible hand kept him down upon his bed.
+Finding himself immovably riveted there, the old boy resigned himself
+to remain motionless; but his thoughts kept running in all directions.
+
+He must have had a very violent fever; for Mademoiselle Prefere, the
+Abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and the servant of Madame de Gabry
+appeared to him in divers fantastic shapes.  The figure of the
+servant in particular lengthened weirdly over his head, grimacing
+like some gargoyle of a cathedral.  Then it seemed to me that there
+were a great many people, much too many people, in my bedroom.
+
+This bedroom of mine is furnished after the antiquated fashion.  The
+portrait of my father in full uniform, and the portrait of my mother
+in her cashmere dress, are suspended on the wall.  The wall-paper
+is covered with green foliage designs.  I am aware of all this, and
+I am even conscious that everything is faded, very much faded.  But
+an old man's room does not require to be pretty; it is enough that
+it should be clean, and Therese sees to that.  At all events my room
+is sufficiently decorated to please a mind like mine, which has
+always remained somewhat childish and dreamy.  There are things
+hanging on the wall or scattered over the tables and shelves which
+usually please my fancy and amuse me.  But to-day it would seem as
+if all those objects had suddenly conceived some kind of ill-will
+against me.  They have all become garish, grimacing, menacing.  That
+statuette, modelled after one of the Theological Virtues of Notre-
+Dame de Brou, always so ingenuously graceful in its natural condition,
+is now making contortions and putting out its tongue at me.  And
+that beautiful miniature--in which one of the most skilful pupils
+of Jehan Fouquet depicted himself, girdled with the cord-girdle of
+the Sons of St. Francis, offering his book, on bended knee, to the
+good Duc d'Angouleme--who has taken it out of its frame and put in
+its place a great ugly cat's head, which stares at me with
+phosphorescent eyes.  And the designs on the wall-paper have also
+turned into heads--hideous green heads....  But no--I am sure that
+wall-paper must have foliage-designs upon it at this moment just
+as it had twenty years ago, and nothing else....  But no, again--I
+was right before--they are heads, with eyes, noses, mouths--they
+are heads!...  Ah! now I understand! they are both heads and foliage-
+designs at the same time.  I wish I could not see them at all.
+
+And there, on my right, the pretty miniature of the Franciscan has
+come back again; but it seems to me as if I can only keep it in its
+frame by a tremendous effort of will, and that the moment I get
+tired the ugly cat-head will appear in its place.  Certainly I am
+not delirious; I can see Therese very plainly, standing at the foot
+of my bed; I can hear her speaking to me perfectly well, and I should
+be able to answer her quite satisfactorily if I were not kept so
+busy in trying to compel the various objects about me to maintain
+their natural aspect.
+
+Here is the doctor coming.  I never sent for him, but it gives me
+pleasure to see him.  He is an old neighbor of mine; I have never
+been of much service to him, but I like him very much.  Even if I
+do not say much to him, I have at least full possession of all my
+faculties, and I even find myself extraordinarily crafty and
+observant to-day, for I note all his gestures, his every look, the
+least wrinkling of his face.  But the doctor is very cunning, too,
+and I cannot really tell what he thinks about me.  The deep thought
+of Goethe suddenly comes to my mind and I exclaim,
+
+"Doctor, the old man has consented to allow himself to become sick;
+but he does not intend, this time at least, to make any further
+concessions to nature."
+
+Neither the doctor nor Therese laughs at my little joke.  I suppose
+they cannot have understood it.
+
+The doctor goes away; evening comes; and all sorts of strange shadows
+begin to shape themselves about my bed-curtains, forming and
+dissolving by turns.  And other shadows--ghosts--throng by before
+me; and through them I can see distinctively the impassive face of
+my faithful servant.  And suddenly a cry, a shrill cry, a great cry
+of distress, rends my ears.  Was it you who called me Jeanne?
+
+The day is over; and the shadows take their places at my bedside to
+remain with me all through the long night.
+
+Then morning comes--I feel a peace, a vast peace, wrapping me all
+about.
+
+Art Thou about to take me into Thy rest, my dear Lord God?
+
+
+February 186-.
+
+
+The doctor is quite jovial.  It seems that I am doing him a great
+deal of credit by being able to get out of bed.  If I must believe
+him, innumerable disorders must have pounced down upon my poor old
+body all at the same time.
+
+These disorders, which are the terror of ordinary mankind, have
+names which are the terror of philologists.  They are hybrid names,
+half Greek, half Latin, with terminations in "itis," indicating the
+inflammatory condition, and in "algia," indicating pain.  The doctor
+gives me all their names, together with a corresponding number of
+adjectives ending in "ic," which serve to characterise their
+detestable qualities.  In short, they represent a good half of that
+most perfect copy of the Dictionary of Medicine contained in the too-
+authentic box of Pandora.
+
+"Doctor, what an excellent common-sense story the story of Pandora
+is!--if I were a poet I would put it into French verse.  Shake hands,
+doctor!  You have brought me back to life; I forgive you for it.  You
+have given me back to my friends; I thank you for it.  You say I am
+quite strong.  That may be, that may be; but I have lasted a very
+long time.  I am a very old article of furniture; I might be very
+satisfactorily compared to my father's arm-chair.  It was an arm-
+chair which the good man had inherited, and in which he used to
+lounge from morning until evening.  Twenty times a day, when I was
+quite a baby, I used to climb up and seat myself on one of the arms
+of that old-fashioned chair.  So long as the chair remained intact,
+nobody paid any particular attention to it.  But it began to limp
+on one foot and then folks began to say that it was a very good
+chair.  Afterwards it became lame in three legs, squeaked with the
+fourth leg, and lost nearly half of both arms.  Then everybody
+would exclaim, 'What a strong chair!'  They wondered how it was
+that after its arms had been worn off and all its legs knocked out
+of perpendicular, it could yet preserve the recognisable shape of
+a chair, remains nearly erect, and still be of some service.  The
+horse-hair came out of its body at last, and it gave up the ghost.
+And when Cyprien, our servant, sawed up its mutilated members for
+fire-wood, everybody redoubled their cries of admiration.  Oh!
+what an excellent--what a marvellous chair!  It was the chair of
+Pierre Sylvestre Bonnard, the cloth merchant--of Epimenide Bonnard,
+his son--of Jean-Baptiste Bonnard, the Pyrrhonian philosopher and
+Chief of the Third Maritime Division.  Oh! what a robust and venerable
+chair!'  In reality it was a dead chair.  Well, doctor, I am that
+chair.  You think I am solid because I have been able to resist an
+attack which would have killed many people, and which only three-
+fourths killed me.  Much obliged!  I feel none the less that I am
+something which has been irremediably damaged."
+
+The doctor tries to prove to me, with the help of enormous Greek and
+Latin words, that I am really in a very good condition.  It would,
+of course, be useless to attempt any demonstration of this kind in
+so lucid a language as French.  However, I allow him to persuade me
+at last; and I see him to the door.
+
+"Good! good!" exclaimed Therese; "that is the way to put the doctor
+out of the house!  Just do the same thing once or twice again, and
+he will not come to see you any more--and so much the better?"
+
+"Well, Therese, now that I have become such a hearty man again, do
+not refuse to give me my letters.  I am sure there must be quite
+a big bundle of letters, and it would be very wicked to keep me any
+longer from reading them."
+
+Therese, after some little grumbling, gave me my letters.  But what
+did it matter?--I looked at all the envelopes, and saw that no one
+of them had been addressed by the little hand which I so much wish
+I could see here now, turning over the pages of the Vecellio.  I
+pushed the whole bundle of letters away:  they had no more interest
+for me.
+
+
+April-June
+
+
+It was a hotly contested engagement.
+
+"Wait, Monsieur, until I have put on my clean things," exclaimed
+Therese, "and I will go out with you this time also; I will carry
+your folding-stool as I have been doing these last few days, and we
+will go and sit down somewhere in the sun."
+
+Therese actually thinks me infirm.  I have been sick, it is true,
+but there is an end to all things!  Madame Malady has taken her
+departure quite awhile ago, and it is now more than three months
+since her pale and gracious-visaged handmaid, Dame Convalescence,
+politely bade me farewell.  If I were to listen to my housekeeper,
+I should become a veritable Monsieur Argant, and I should wear a
+nightcap with ribbons for the rest of my life....  No more of this!--
+I propose to go out by myself!  Therese will not hear of it.  She
+takes my folding-stool, and wants to follow me.
+
+"Therese, to-morrow, if you like, we will take our seats on the
+sunny side of the wall of La Petite Provence and stay there just as
+long as you please.  But to-day I have some very important affairs
+to attend to."
+
+"So much the better!  But your affairs are not the only affairs in
+this world."
+
+I beg; I scold; I make my escape.
+
+It is quite a pleasant day.  With the aid of a cab and the help of
+almighty God, I trust to be able to fulfil my purpose.
+
+There is the wall on which is painted in great blue letters the
+words "Pensionnat de Demoiselles tenu par Mademoiselle Virginie
+Prefere."  There is the iron gate which would give free entrance
+into the court-yard if it were ever opened.  But the lock is rusty,
+and sheets of zinc put up behind the bars protect the indiscreet
+observation those dear little souls to whom Mademoiselle Prefere
+doubtless teaches modesty, sincerity, justice, and disinterestedness.
+There is a window, with iron bars before it, and panes daubed over
+with white paint--the window of the domestic offices, like a glazed
+eye--the only aperture of the building opening upon the exterior
+world.  As for the house-door, through which I entered so often,
+but which is now closed against me for ever, it is just as I saw it
+the last time, with its little iron-grated wicket.  The single
+stone step in front of it is deeply worn, and, without having very
+good eyes behind my spectacles, I can see the little white scratches
+on the stone which have been made by the nails in the shoes of the
+girls going in and out.  And why cannot I also go in?  I have a
+feeling that Jeanne must be suffering a great deal in this dismal
+house, and that she calls my name in secret.  I cannot go away from
+the gate!  A strange anxiety takes hold of me.  I pull the bell.
+The scared-looking servant comes to the door, even more scared-
+looking than when I saw her the last time.  Strict orders have been
+given; I am not to be allowed to see Mademoiselle Jeanne.  I beg
+the servant to be so kind as to tell me how the child is.  The
+servant, after looking to her right and then to her left, tells me
+that Mademoiselle Jeanne is well, and then shuts the door in my
+face.  And I am all alone in the street again.
+
+How many times since then have I wandered in the same way under that
+wall, and passed before the little door,--full of shame and despair
+to find myself even weaker than that poor child, who has no other
+help of friend except myself in the world!
+
+Finally I overcame my repugnance sufficiently to call upon Maitre
+Mouche.  The first thing I remarked was that his office is much more
+dusty and much more mouldy this year that it was last year.  The
+notary made his appearance after a moment, with his familiar stiff
+gestures, and his restless eyes quivering behind his eye-glasses.
+I made my complaints to him.  He answered me....  But why should I
+write down, even in a notebook which I am going to burn, my
+recollections of a downright scoundrel?  He takes sides with
+Mademoiselle Prefere, whose intelligent mind and irreproachable
+character he has long appreciated.  He does not feel himself in a
+position to decide the nature of the question at issue; but he must
+assure me that appearances have been greatly against me.  That of
+course makes no difference to me.  He adds--(and this does make some
+sense to me)--that the small sum which had been placed in his hands
+to defray the expenses of the education of his ward has been
+expended, and that, in view of the circumstances, he cannot but
+gently admire the disinterestedness of Mademoiselle Prefere in
+consenting to allow Mademoiselle Jeanne to remain with her.
+
+A magnificent light, the light of a perfect day, floods the sordid
+place with its incorruptible torrent, and illuminates teh person of
+that man!
+
+And outside it pours down its splendour upon all the wretchedness of
+a populous quarter.
+
+How sweet it is,--this light with which my eyes have so long been
+filled, and which ere long I must for ever cease to enjoy!  I wander
+out with my hands behind me, dreaming as I go, following the line of
+the fortifications; and I find myself after awhile, I know not how,
+in an out-of-the-way suburb full of miserable little gardens.  By
+the dusty roadside I observe a plant whose flower, at once dark and
+splendid, seems worthy of association with the noblest and purest
+mouning for the dead.  It is a columbine.  Our fathers called it "Our
+Lady's Glove"--le gant de Notre-Dame.  Only such a "Notre-Dame"
+as might make herself very, very small, for the sake of appearing to
+little children, could ever slip her dainty fingers into the narrow
+capsue of that flower.
+
+And there is a big bumble-bee who tries to force himself into the
+flower, brutally; but his mouth cannot reach the nectar, and the
+poor glutton strives and strives in vain.  He has to give up the
+attempt, and comes out of the flower all smeared over with pollen.
+He flies off in his own heavy lumbering way; but there are not many
+flowers in this portion of the suburbs, which has been defiled by
+the soot and smoke of factories.  So he comes back to the columbine
+again, and this time he pierces the corolla and sucks the honey
+through the little hole which he has made; I should never have thought
+that a bumble-bee had so much sense!  Why, that is admirble!  The
+more I observe, them, the more do insects and flowers fill me with
+astonishment.  I am like that good Rollin who went wild with delight
+over the flowers of his peach-trees.  I wish I could have a fine
+garden, and live at the verge of a wood.
+
+
+August, September.
+
+
+It occurred to me one Sunday morning to watch for the moment when
+Mademoiselle Prefere's pupils were leaving the school in procession
+to attand Mass at the parish church.  I watched them passing two
+by two,--the little ones first with very serious faces.  There were
+three of them all dressed exactly alike--dumpy, plump, important-
+looking little creatures, whom I recognized at once as the Mouton
+girls.  Their elder sister is the artist who drew that terrrible
+head of Tatius, King of the Sabines.  Beside the column, the
+assistant school-teacher, with her prayer-book in her hand, was
+gesturing and frowning.  Then came the next oldest class, and
+finally the big girls, all whispering to each other, as they went
+by.  But I did not see Jeanne.
+
+I went to police-headquarters and inquired whether they chanced to
+have, filed away somewhere or other, any information regarding the
+establishment in the Rue Demours.  I succeeded in inducing them to
+send some female inspectors there.  These returned bringing with
+them the most favourable reports about the establishment.  In their
+opinion the Prefere School was a model school.  It is evident that
+if I were to force an investigation, Mademoiselle Prefere would
+receive academic honours.
+
+
+October 3.
+
+
+This Thursday being a school-holiday I had teh chance of meeting the
+three little Mouton girls in the vicinity of the Rue Demours.  After
+bowing to their mother, I asked the eldest who appears to be about
+ten years old, how was her playmate, Mademoiselle Jeanne Alexandre.
+
+The little Mouton girl answered me, all in a breath,
+
+"Jeanne Alexandre is not my playmate.  She is only kept in the school
+for charity--so they make her sweep the class-rooms.  It was
+Mademoiselle who said so.  And Jeanne Alexandre is a bad girl; so
+they lock her up in the dark room--and it serves her right--and I
+am a good girl--and I am never locked up in the dark room."
+
+The three little girls resumed their walk, and Madame Mouton followed
+close behind them, looking back over her broad shoulder at me, in a
+very suspicious manner.
+
+Alas!  I find myself reduced to expedients of a questionable
+character.  Madame de Gabry will not come back to Paris for at least
+three months more, at the very soonest.  Without her, I have no tact,
+I have no common sense--I am nothing but a cumbersome, clumsy,
+mischief-making machine.
+
+Nevertheless, I cannot possibly permit them to make Jeanne a
+boarding-school servant!
+
+
+December 28.
+
+
+The idea that Jeanne was obliged to sweep the rooms had become
+absolutely unbearable.
+
+The weather was dark and cold.  Night had already begun.  I rang the
+school-door bell with the tranquillity of a resolute man.  The moment
+that the timid servant opened the door, I slipped a gold piece into
+her hand, and promised her another if she would arrange matters so
+that I could see Mademoiselle Alexandre.  Her answer was,
+
+"In one hour from now, at the grated window."
+
+And she slammed the door in my face so rudely that she knocked my
+hat into the gutter.  I waited for one very long hour in a violent
+snow-storm; then I approached the window.  Nothing!  The wind raged,
+and the snow fell heavily.  Workmen passing by with their implements
+on their shoulders, and their heads bent down to keep the snow from
+coming in their faces, rudely jostled me.  Still nothing.  I began
+to fear I had been observed.  I knew that I had done wrong in bribing
+a servant, but I was not a bit sorry for it.  Woe to the man who
+does not know how to break through social regulations in case of
+necessity!  Another quarter of an hour passed.  Nothing.  At last
+the window was partly opened.
+
+"Is that you, Monsieur Bonnard?"
+
+Is that you, Jeanne?--tell me at once what has become of you."
+
+"I am well--very well."
+
+"But what else!"
+
+"They have put me in the kitchen, and I have to sweep the school-
+rooms."
+
+"In the kitchen!  Sweeping--you!  Gracious goodness!"
+
+"Yes, because my guardian does not pay for my schooling any longer."
+
+"Gracious goodness!  Your guardian seems to me to be a thorough
+scoundrel."
+
+"Then you know---"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh! don't ask me to tell you that!--but I would rather die than find
+myself alone with him again."
+
+"And why did you not write to me?"
+
+"I was watched."
+
+At this instant I formed a resolve which nothing in this world could
+have induced me to change.  I did, indeed, have some idea that I
+might be acting contrary to law; but I did not give myself the least
+concern about that idea.  And, being firmly resolved, I was able to
+be prudent.  I acted with remarkable coolness.
+
+"Jeanne," I asked, "tell me! does that room you are in open into
+the court-yard?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you open the street-door from the inside yourself?"
+
+"Yes,--if there is nobody in the porter's lodge."
+
+"Go and see if there is any one there, and be careful that nobody
+observes you."
+
+Then I waited, keeping a watch on the door and window.
+
+In six or seven seconds Jeanne reappeared behind the bars, and said,
+
+"The servant is in the porter's lodge."
+
+"Very well," I said, "have you a pen and ink?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A pencil?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Pass it out here."
+
+I took an old newspaper out of my pocket, and--in a wind which blew
+almost hard enough to put the street-lamps out, in a downpour of
+snow which almost blinded me--I managed to wrap up and address that
+paper to Mademoiselle Prefere.
+
+While I was writing I asked Jeanne,
+
+"When the postman passes he puts the papers and letters in the box,
+doesn't he?  He rings the bell and goes away?  Then the servant opens
+the letter-box and takes whatever she finds there to Mademoiselle
+Prefere immediately; is not that about the way the thing is managed
+whenever anything comes by post?"
+
+Jeanne thought it was.
+
+"Then we shall soon see.  Jeanne, go and watch again; and, as soon
+as the servant leaves the lodge, open the door and come out here to
+me."
+
+Having said this, I put my newspaper in the box, gave the bell a
+tremendous pull, and then hid myself in the embrasure of a
+neighbouring door.
+
+I might have been there several minutes, when the little door
+quivered, then opened, and a young girl's head made its appearance
+through the opening.  I took hold of it; I pulled it towards me.
+
+"Come, Jeanne! come!"
+
+She stared at me uneasily.  Certainly she must have been afraid that
+I had gone mad; but, on the contrary, I was very rational indeed.
+
+"Come, my child! come!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Madame de Gabry's."
+
+Then she took my arm.  For some time we ran like a couple of thieves.
+But running is an exercise ill-suited to one as corpulent as I am,
+and, finding myself out of breath at last, I stopped and leaned
+upon something which turned out to be the stove of a dealer in
+roasted chestnuts, who was doing business at the corner of a wine-
+seller's shop, where a number of cabmen were drinking.  One of them
+asked us if we did not want a cab.  Most assuredly we wanted a cab!
+The driver, after setting down his glass on the zinc counter,
+climbed upon his seat and urged his horse forward.  We were saved.
+
+"Phew!" I panted, wiping my forehead.  For, in spite of the cold,
+I was perspiring profusely.
+
+What seemed very odd was that Jeanne appeared to be much more
+conscious than I was of the enormity which we had committed.  She
+looked very serious indeed, and was visibly uneasy.
+
+"In the kitchen!" I cried out, with indignation.
+
+She shook her head, as if to say, "Well, there or anywhere else,
+what does it matter to me?"  And by the light of the street-lamps,
+I observed with pain that her face was very thin and her features
+all pinched.  I did not find in her any of that vivacity, any of
+those bright impulses, any of that quickness of expression, which
+used to please me so much.  Her gaze had become timid, her gestures
+constrained, her whole attitude melancholy.  I took her hand--a
+little cold hand, which had become all hardened and bruised.  The
+poor child must have suffered very much.  I questioned her.  She
+told me very quietly that Mademoiselle Prefere had summoned her
+one day, and called her a little monster and a little viper, for
+some reason which she had never been able to learn.
+
+She had added, "You shall not see Monsieur Bonnard any more; for he
+has been giving you bad advice, and he has conducted himself in a
+most shameful manner towards me."  "I then said to her, 'That,
+Mademoiselle, you will never be able to make me believe.'  Then
+Mademoiselle slapped my face and sent me back to the school-room.
+The announcement that I should never be allowed to see you again
+made me feel as if night had come down upon me.  Don't you know
+those evenings when one feels so sad to see the darkness come?--well,
+just imagine such a moment stretched out into weeks--into whole
+months!  Don't you remember my little Saint-George?  Up to that
+time I had worked at it as well as I could--just simply to work at
+it--just to amuse myself.  But when I lost all hope of ever seeing
+you again I took my little wax figure, and I began to work at it in
+quite another way.  I did not try to model it with wooden matches
+any more, as I had been doing, but with hair pins.  I even made use
+of epingles a la neige.  But perhaps you do not know what epingles
+a la neige are?  Well, I became more particular about than you can
+possibly imagine.  I put a dragon on Saint-George's helmet; and I
+passed hours and hours in making a head and eyes and tail for the
+dragon.  Oh the eyes! the eyes, above all!  I never stopped working
+at them till I got them so that they had red pupils and white eye-
+lids and eye-brows and everything!  I know I am very silly; I had
+an idea that I was going to die as soon as my little Saint-George
+would be finished.  I worked at it during recreation-hours, and
+Mademoiselle Prefere used to let me alone.  One day I learned that
+you were in the parlour with the schoolmistress; I watched for you;
+we said 'Au revoir!' that day to each other.  I was a little consoled
+by seeing you.  But, some time after that, my guardian came and
+wanted to make me go to his house,--but please don't ask me why,
+Monsieur.  He answered me, quite gently, that I was a very whimsical
+little girl.  And then he left me alone.  But the next day
+Mademoiselle Prefere came to me with such a wicked look on her face
+that I was really afraid.  She had a letter in her hand. 
+'Mademoiselle,' she said to me, 'I am informed by your guardian
+that he has spent all the money which belonged to you.  Don't be
+afraid!  I do not intend to abandon you; but, you must acknowledge
+yourself, it is only right that you should earn your own livelihood.'
+Then she put me to work house-cleaning; and whenever I made a mistake
+she would lock me up in the garet for days together.  And that is
+what has happened to me since I saw you last.  Even if I had been
+able to write to you I do not know whether I should have done it,
+because I did not think you could possibly take me away from the
+school; and, as Maitre Mouche did not come back to see me, there
+was no hurry.  I thought I could wait for awhile in the garret and
+the kitchen.
+
+"Jeanne," I cried, "even if we should have to flee to Oceania, the
+abominable Prefere shall never get hold of you again.  I will take
+a great oath on that!  And why should we not go to Oceania?  The
+climate is very healthy; and I read in a newspaper the other day
+that they have pianos there.  But, in the meantime, let us go to
+the house of Madame de Gabry, who returned to Paris, as luck would
+have it, some three or four days ago; for you and I are two innocent
+fools, and we have great need of some one to help us."
+
+Even as I was speaking Jeanne's features suddenly became pale, and
+seemed to shrink into lifelessness; her eyes became all dim; her
+lips, half open, contracted with an expression of pain.  Then her
+head sank sideways on her shoulder;--she had fainted.
+
+I lifter her in my arms, and carried her up Madame de Gabry's
+staircase like a little baby asleep.  But I was myself on  the point
+of fainting from emotional excitement and fatigue together, when
+she came to herself again.
+
+"Ah! it is you." she said:  "so much the better!"
+
+Such was our condition when we rang our friend's door-bell.
+
+
+Same day.
+
+
+It was eight o'clock.  Madame de Gabry, as might be supposed, was
+very much surprised by our unexpected appearance.  But she welcomed
+the old man and the child with that glad kindness which always
+expresses itself in her beautiful gestures.  It seems to me,--if I
+might use the language of devotion so familiar to her,--it seems to
+me as though some heavenly grace streams from her hands when ever
+she opens them; and even the perfume which impregnates her robes
+seems to inspire the sweet calm zeal of charity and good works. 
+Surprised she certainly was; but she asked us no question,--and
+that silence seemed to me admirable.
+
+"Madame," I said to her, "we have both come to place ourselves under
+your protection.  And, first of all, we are going to ask you to give
+us some super--or to give Jeanne some, at least; for a moment ago,
+in the carriage, she fainted from weakness.  As for myself, I could
+not eat a bite at this late hour without passing a night of agony
+in consequence.  I hope that Monsieur de Gabry is well."
+
+"Oh, he is here!" she said.
+
+And she called him immediately.
+
+"Come in here, Paul!  Come and see Monsieur Bonnard and Mademoiselle
+Alexandre."
+
+He came.  It was a pleasure for me to see his frank broad face, and
+to press his strong square hand.  Then we went, all four of us,
+into the dining-room; and while some cold meat was being cut for
+Jeanne--which she never touched notwithstanding--I related our
+adventure.  Paul de Gabry asked me permission to smoke his pipe,
+after which he listened to me in silence.  When I had finished my
+recital he scratched the short, stiff beard upon his chin, and
+uttered a tremendous "Sacrebleu!"  But, seeing Jeanne stare at
+each of us in turn, with a frightened look in her face, he added:
+
+"We will talk about this matter to-morrow morning.  Come into my
+study for a moment; I have an old book to show you that I want you
+to tell me something about."
+
+I followed him into his study, where the steel of guns and hunting
+knives, suspended against the dark hangings, glimmered in the lamp-
+light.  There, pulling me down beside him upon a leather-covered
+sofa, he exclaimed,
+
+"What have you done?  Great God!  Do you know what you have done?
+Corruption of a minor, abduction, kidnapping!  You have got yourself
+into a nice mess!  You have simply rendered yourself liable to a
+sentence of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than ten
+years."
+
+"Mercy on us!" I cried; "ten years imprisonment for having saved an
+innocent child."
+
+"That is the law!" answered Monsieur de Gabry.  "You see, my dear
+Monsieur Bonnard, I happen to know the Code pretty well--not because
+I ever studied law as a profession, but because, as mayor of Lusance,
+I was obliged to teach myself something about it in order to be able
+to give information to my subordinates.  Mouche is a rascal; that
+woman Prefere is a vile hussy; and you are a...Well! I really cannot
+find a word strong enough to signify what you are!"
+
+After opening his bookcase, where dog-collars, riding-whips, stirrups,
+spurs, cigar-boxes, and a few books of reference were indiscriminately
+stowed away, he took out of it a copy of the Code, and began to turn
+over the leaves.
+
+"'CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS'...'SEQUESTRATION OF PERSONS'--that is
+not your case....  'ABDUCTION OF MINORS'--here we are....'ARTICLE
+354':--'Whosever shall, either by fraud or violence, have abducted
+or have caused to be abducted any minor or minors, or shall have
+enticed them, or turned them away from, or forcibly removed them,
+or shall have caused them to be enticed, or turned away from or
+forcibly removed from the places in which they have been placed by
+those to whose authority or direction they have been submitted or
+confided, shall be liable to the penalty of imprisonment.  See
+PENAL CODE, 21 and 28.'  Here is 21:--'The term of imprisonment
+shall not be less than five years.' 28. 'The sentence of imprisonment
+shall be considered as involving a loss of civil rights.'  Now all
+that is very plain, is it not, Monsieur Bonnard?"
+
+"Perfectly plain."
+
+"Now let us go on:  'ARTICLE 356':--'In case the abductor be under
+the age of 21 years at the time of the offense, he shall only be
+punished with'...But we certainly cannot invoke this artice in your
+favour.  'ARTICLE 357:':--'In case the abductor shall have married
+the girl by him abducted, he can only be prosecuted at the insistence
+of such persons as, according to the Civil Code, may have the right
+to demand that the marriage shall be declared null; nor can he be
+condemned until after the nullity of the marriage shall have been
+pronounced.'  I do not know whether it is a part of your plans to
+marry Mademoiselle Alexandre!  You can see that the code is good-
+natured about it; it leaves you one door of escape.  But no--I ought
+not to joke with you, because really you have put yourself in a very
+unfortunate position!  And how could a man like you imagine that here
+in Paris, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a young girl can
+be abducted with absolute impunity?  We are not living in the Middle
+Ages now; and such things are no longer permitted by law."
+
+"You need not imagine," I replied, "that abduction was lawful under
+the ancient Code.  You will find in Baluze a decree issued by King
+Cheldebert at Cologne, either in 593 or 594, on the subject:
+moreoever, everybody knows that the famous 'Ordonance de Blois,' of
+May 1579, formally enacted that any persons convicted of having
+suborned any son or daughter under the age of twenty-five years,
+whether under promise of marriage or otherwise, without the full
+knowledge, will, or consent of the father, mother, and guardians,
+should be punished with death; and the ordinance adds: 'Et
+pareillement seront punis extraordinairement tous ceux qui auront
+participe audit rapt, et qui auront prete conseil, confort, et
+aide en aucune maniere que ce soit.' (And in like manner shall be
+extraordinarily punished all persons whomsoever, who shall have
+participated in the said abduction, and who shall have given
+thereunto counsel, succor, or aid in any manner whatsoever.)  Those
+are the exact, or very nearly the exact, terms of the ordinance.
+As for that article of the Code-Napoleon which you have just told
+me of, and which excepts from liability to prosecution the abductor
+who marries the young girl abducted by him, it reminds me that
+according to the laws of Bretagne, forcible abduction, followed by
+marriage, was not punished.  But this usage, which involved various
+abuses, was suppressed in 1720--at least I give you the date within
+ten years.  My memory is not very good now, and the time is long
+passed when I could repeat by heart without even stopping to take
+breath, fifteen hundred verses of Girart de Rousillon.
+
+"As far as regards the Capitulary of Charlemagne, which fixes the
+compensation for abduction, I have not mentioned it because I am
+sure that you must remember it.  So, my dear Monsieur de Gabry, you
+see abduction was considered as decidedly a punishable offense under
+the three dynasties of Old France.  It is a very great mistake to
+suppose that the Middle Ages represent a period of social chaos. 
+You must remember, on the contrary---"
+
+Monsieur de Gabry here interrupted me:
+
+"So," he exclaimed, "you know of the Ordonnacne de Blois, you know
+Baluze, you know Childebert, you know the Capitularies--and you
+don't know anything about the Code-Napoleon!"
+
+I replied that, as a matter of fact, I never had read the Code; and
+he looked very much surprised.
+
+"And now do you understand," he asked, "the extreme gravity of the
+action you have committed?"
+
+I had not indeed been yet able to understand it fully.  But little
+by little, with the aid of Monsieur Paul's very sensible explanations,
+I reached the conviction at last that I should not be judged in
+regard to my motives, which were innocent, but only according to my
+action, which was punishable.  Thereupon I began to feel very
+despondent, and to utter divers lamentations.
+
+"What am I to do?" I cried out, "what am I to do?  Am I then
+irretrievably ruined?--and have I also ruined the poor child whom I
+wanted to save?"
+
+Monsieur de Gabry silently filled his pipe, and lighted it so slowly
+that his kind broad face remained for at least three or four minutes
+glowing red behind the light, like a blacksmith's in the gleam of
+his forge-fire.  Then he said,
+
+"You want to know what to do?  Why, don't do anything, my dear
+Monsieur Bonnard!  For God's sake, and for your own sake, don't do
+anything at all!  Your situation is bad enough as it is; don't try
+to meddle with it now, unless you want to create new difficulties
+for yourself.  But you must promise me to sustain me in any action
+that I may take.  I shall go to see Monsieur Mouche the very first
+thing to-morrow morning; and if he turns out to be what I think he
+is--that is to say, a consummate rascal--I shall very soon find means
+of making him harmless, even if the devil himself should take sides
+with him.  For everything depends on him.  As it is too late this
+evening to take Mademoiselle Jeanne back to her boarding-school, my
+wife will keep the young lady here to-night.  This of course plainly
+constitues the misdemeanour of complicity; but it saves the girl
+from anything like an equivocal position.  As for you, my dear
+Monsieur, you just go back to the Quai Malaquais as quickly as you
+can; and if they come to look for Jeanne there, it will be very easy
+for you to prove she is not in your house."
+
+While we were thus talking, Madame de Gabry was preparing to make
+her young lodger comfortable for the night.  When she bade me good-bye
+at the door, she was carrying a pair of clean sheets, scented with
+lavender, thrown over her arm.
+
+"That," I said, "is a sweet honest smell."
+
+"Well, of course," answered Madame de Gabry, "you must remember we
+are peasants."
+
+"Ah!" I answered her, "heaven grant that I also may be able one of
+these days ti becine a peasant!  Heaven grant that one of these days
+I may be able, as you are at Lusance, to inhale the sweet fresh odour
+of the country, and live in some little house all hidden among trees;
+and if this wish of mine be too ambitious on the part of an old man
+whose life is nearly closed, then I will only wish that my winding-
+sheet may be as sweetly scented with lavender as that linen you have
+on your arm."
+
+It was agreed that I should come to lunch the following morning.  But
+I was positively forbidden to show myself at the house before midday.
+Jeanne, as she kissed me good-bye, begged me not to take her back
+to the school any more.  We felt much affected at parting, and very
+anxious.
+
+I found Therese waiting for me on the landing, in such a condition
+of worry about me that it had made her furious.  She talked of nothing
+less than keeping me under lock and key in the future.
+
+What a night I passed!  I never closed my eyes for one single instant.
+From time to time I could not help laughing like a boy at the success
+of my prank; and then again, an inexpressible feeling of horror would
+come upon me at the thought of being dragged before some magistrate,
+and having to take my place upon the prisoner's bench, to answer
+for the crime which I had so naturally committed.  I was very much
+afraid; and nevertheless I felt no remorse or regret whatever.  The
+sun, coming into my room at last, merrily lighted upon the foot of
+my bed, and then I made this prayer:
+
+"My God, Thou who didst make the sky and the dew, as it is said in
+'Tristan,' judge me in Thine equity, not indeed according unto my
+acts, but according only to my motives, which Thou knowest have
+been upright and pure; and I will say:  Glory to Thee in heaven,
+and peace on earth to men of good-will.  I give into Thy hands the
+child I stole away.  Do that for her which I have not known how to
+do; guard for her from all her enemies;--and blessed for ever be
+Thy name!"
+
+
+December 29.
+
+
+When I arrived at Madame de Gabry's, I found Jeanne completely
+transfigured.
+
+Had she also, like myself, at the very first light of dawn, called
+upon Him who made the sky and the dew?  She smiled with such a
+sweet calm smile!
+
+Madame de Gabry called her away to arrange her hair for the amiable
+lady had insisted upon combing and plaiting, with her own hands,
+the hair of the child confided to her care.  As I had come a little
+before the hour agreed upon, I had interrupted this charming toilet.
+By way of punishment I was told to go and wait in the parlour all
+by myself.  Monsieur de Gabry joined me there in a little while.
+He had evidently just come in, for I could see on his forehead the
+mark left my the lining of his hat.  His frank face wore an expression
+of joyful excitement.  I thought I had better not ask him any
+questions; and we all went to lunch.  When the servants had finished
+waiting at table, Monsieur Paul, who had been keeping his good story
+for the dessert, said to us,
+
+"Well!  I went to Levallois."
+
+"Did you see Maitre Mouche?" excitedly inquired Madame de Gabry.
+
+"No," he replied, curiously watching the expression of disappointment
+upon our faces.
+
+After having amused himself with our anxiety for a reasonable time,
+the good fellow added:
+
+"Maitre Mouche is no longer at Levallois.  Maitre Mouche has gone
+away from France.  The day after to-morrow will make just eight days
+since he decamped, taking with him all the money of his clients--a
+tolerably large sum.  I found the office closed.  A woman who lived
+close by told me all about it with an abundance of curses and
+imprecations.  The notary did not take the 7:55 train all by himself;
+he took with him the daughter of the hairdresser of Levallois, a
+young person quite famous in that part of the country for her beauty
+and her accomplishments;--they say she could shave better than her
+father.  Well, anyhow Mouche has run away with her; the Commissaire
+de Police confirmed the fact for me.  Now, really, could it have been
+possible for Maitre Mouche to have left the country at a more
+opportune moment?  If he had only deferred his escapade one week
+longer, he would have been still the representative of society, and
+would have had you dragged off to gaol, Monsieur Bonnard, like a
+criminal.  At present we have nothing whatever to fear from him.
+Here is to the health of Maitre Mouche!" he cried, pouring out a
+glass of white wine.
+
+I would like to live a long time if it were only to remember that
+delightful morning.  We four were all assembled in the big white
+dining-room around the waxed oak table.  Monsieur Paul's mirth was'
+of the hearty kind,--even perhaps a little riotous; and the good
+man quaffed deeply.  Madame de Gabry smiled at me, with a smile so
+sweet, so perfect, and so noble, that I thought such a woman ought
+to keep smiles like that simply as a reward for good actions, and
+thus make everybody who knew her do all the good of which they
+were capable.  Then, to reward us for our pains, Jeanne, who had
+regained something of her former vivacity, asked us in less than a
+quarter of an hour one dozen questions, to answer which would have
+required an exhaustive exposition on the nature of man, the
+nature of the universe, the science of physics and of metaphysics,
+the Macrocosm and the Microcosm--not to speak of the Ineffable and
+the Unknowable.  Then she drew out of her pocket her little Saint-
+George, who had suffered most cruelly during our flight.  His legs
+and arms were gone; but he still had his gold helmet with the green
+dragon on it.  Jeanne solemnly pledged herself to make a restoration
+of him in honour of Madame de Gabry.
+
+Delightful friends!  I left them at last overwhelmed with fatigue
+and joy.
+
+
+On re-entering my lodgings I had to endure the very sharpest
+remonstrances from Therese, who said she had given up trying to
+understand my new way of living.  In her opinion Monsieur had really
+lost his mind.
+
+"Yes, Therese, I am a mad old man and you are a mad old woman.  That
+is certain!  May the good God bless us both, Therese, and give us
+new strength; for we now have new duties to perform.  but let me
+lie down upon the sofa; for I really cannot keep myself on my feet
+any longer."
+
+
+January 15, 186-.
+
+
+"Good-morning, Monsieur," said Jeanne, letting herself in; while
+Therese remained grumbling in the corridor because she had not been
+able to get to the door in time.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I beg you will be kind enough to address me very
+solemnly by my title, and to say to me, 'Good-morning, my guardian.'"
+
+"Then it has all been settled?  Oh, how nice!" cried the child,
+clapping her hands.
+
+"It has all been arranged, Mademoiselle, in the Salle-commune and
+before the Justice of the Peace; and from to-day you are under my
+authority....  What are you laughing about, my ward?  I see it in
+your eyes.  You have some crazy idea in your head this very moment--
+some more nonsense, eh?"
+
+"Oh, no!  Monsieur.... I mean, my guardian.  I was looking at your
+white hair.  It curls out from under the edge of your hat like
+honeysuckle on a balcony.  It is very handsome, and I like it very
+much!"
+
+"Be good enough to sit down, my ward, and, if you can possibly help
+it, stop saying ridiculous things, because I have some very serious
+things to say to you.  Listen.  I suppose you are not going to
+insist upon being sent back to the establishment of Mademoiselle
+Prefere?...  No.  Well, then, what would you say if I should take
+you here to live with me, and to finish your education, and keep
+you here until...what shall I say?--for ever, as the song has it?"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur!" she cried, flushing crimson with pleasure.
+
+I continued,
+
+"Behind there we have a nice little room, which my housekeeper has
+cleaned up and furnished for you.  You are going to take the place
+of the books which used to be in it; you will succeed them as the
+day succeeds night.  Go with Therese and look at it, and see if you
+think you will be able to live in it.  Madame de Gabry and I have
+made up our minds that you can sleep there to-night."
+
+She had already started to run; I called her back for a moment.
+
+"Jeanne, listen to me a moment longer!  You have always until now
+made yourself a favourite with my housekeeper, who, like all very
+old people, is apt to be cross at times.  Be gentle and forebearing.
+Make every allowance for her.  I have thought it my duty to make
+every allowance for her myself, and to put up with all her fits of
+impatience.  Now, let me tell you, Jeanne:--Respect her!  And when
+I say that, I do not forget that she is my servant and yours; neither
+will she ever allow herself to forget it for a moment.  But what I
+want you to respect in her is her great age and her great heart.
+She is a humble woman who has lived a very, very long time in the
+habit of doing good; and she has become hardened and stiffened in
+that habit.  Bear patiently with the harsh ways of that upright
+soul.  If you know how to command, she will know how to obey.  Go
+now, my child; arrange your room in whatever way may seem to you
+best suited for your studies and for your repose."
+
+Having started Jeanne, with this viaticum, upon her domestic career,
+I began to read a Review, which, although conducted by very young
+men, is excellent.  The tone of it is somewhat unpolished, but the
+spirit is zealous.  The article I read was certainly far superior,
+in point of precision and positiveness, to anything of the sort
+ever written when I was a young man.  The author of the article,
+Monsieur Paul Meyer, points out every error with a remarkably
+lucid power of incisive criticism.
+
+We used not in my time to criticise with such strict justice.  Our
+indulgence was vast.  It went even so far as to confuse the scholar
+and the ignoramus in the same burst of praise.  And nevertheless
+one must learn how to find fault; and it is even an imperative duty
+to blame when the blame is deserved.
+
+I remember little Raymond (that was the name we gave him); he did
+not know anything, and his mind was not a mind capable of absorbing
+any solid learning; but he was very fond of his mother.  We took
+very good care never to utter a hint of the ignorance of so perfect
+a son; and, thanks, to our forbearance, little Raymond made his way
+to the highest positions.  He had lost his mother then; but honours
+of all kinds were showered upon him.  He became omnipotent--to the
+grievous injury of his colleagues and of science....  But here comes
+my young fiend of the Luxembourg.
+
+"Good-evening, Gelis.  You look very happy to-day.  What good fortune
+has come to you, my dear lad?"
+
+His good fortune is that he has been able to sustain his thesis very
+credibly, and that he has taken high rank in his class.  He tells
+me this with the additional information that my own words, which
+were incidentally referred to in the course of the examination, had
+been spoken of by the college professors in terms of the most
+unqualified praise.
+
+"That is very nice," I replied; "and it makes me very happy, Gelis,
+to find my old reputation thus associated with your own youthful
+honours.  I was very much interested, you know, in that thesis of
+yours;--but some domestic arrangements have been keeping me so busy
+lately that I quite forgot this was the day on which you were to
+sustain it."
+
+Mademoiselle Jeanne made her appearance very opportunely, as if in
+order to suggest to him something about the nature of those very
+domestic arrangements.  The giddy girl burst into the City of Books
+like a fresh breeze, crying at the top of her voice that her room
+was a perfect little wonder.  then she became very red indeed on
+seeing Monsieur Gelis there.  But none of us can escape our destiny.
+
+Monsieur Gelis asked her how she was with the tone of a young fellow
+who resumes upon a previous acquaintance, and who proposes to put
+himself forward as an old friend.  Oh, never fear!--she had not
+forgotten him at all; that was very evident from the fact that then
+and there, right under my nose, they resumed their last year's
+conversation on the subject of the "Venetian blond"!  They continued
+the discussion after quite an animated fashion.  I began to ask
+myself what right I had to be in the room at all.  The only thing
+I could do in order to make myself heard was to cough.  As for getting
+in a word, they never even gave me a chance.  Gelis discoursed
+enthusiastically, not only about the Venetian colourists, but also
+upon all other matters relating to nature or to mankind.  And Jeanne
+kept answering him, "Yes, Monsieur, you are right."....  "That is just
+what I supposed, Monsieur."....  "Monsieur, you express so beautifully
+just what I feel."...  "I am going to think a great deal about what
+you have just told me, Monsieur."
+
+When I speak, Mademoiselle never answers me in that tone.  It is
+only with the very tip of her tongue that she will even taste any
+intellectual food which I set before her.  Usually she will not touch
+it at all.  But Monsieur Gelis seems to be in her opinion the supreme
+authority upon all subjects.  It was always, "Oh, yes!"--"Oh, of
+course!"--to all his empty chatter.  And, then, the eyes of Jeanne!
+I had never seen them look so large before; I had never before
+observed in them such fixity of expression; but her gaze otherwise
+remained what it always is--artless, frank, and brave.  Gelis
+evidently pleased her; she like Gelis, and her eyes betrayed the
+fact.  They would have published it to the entire universe!  All
+very fine, Master Bonnard!--you have been so deeply interested in
+observing your ward, that you have been forgetting you are her
+guardian!  You began only this morning to exercise that function;
+and you can already see that it involves some very delicate and
+difficult duties.  Bonnard, you must really try to devise some means
+of keeping that young man away from her; you really ought.... Eh!
+how am I to know what I am to do?...
+
+I have picked up a book at random from the nearest shelf; I open it,
+and I enter respectfully into the middle of a drama of Sophocles.
+the older I grow, the more I learn to love the two civilisations
+of the antique world; and now I always keep the poets of Italy and
+of Greece on a shelf within easy reach of my arm in the City of
+Books.
+
+Monsieur and Mademoiselle finally condescend to take some notice of
+me, now that I seem too busy to take any notice of them.  I really
+think that Mademoiselle Jeanne has even asked me what I am reading.
+No, indeed, I will not tell her what it is.  what I am reading,
+between ourselves, is the change of that smooth and luminous Chorus
+which rolls out its magnificent tunefulness through a scene of
+passionate violence--the Chorus of the Old Men of Thebes--'Erws
+avixate...' "Invincible Love, O thou who descendest upon rich
+houses,--Thou who dost rest upon the delicate cheek of the maiden,--
+Thou who dost traverse all seas,--surely none among the Immortals
+can escape Thee, nor indeed any among men who live but for a little
+space; and he who is possessed by Thee, there is a madness upon him."
+And when I had re-read that delicious chant, the face of Antigone
+appeared before me in all its passionless purity.  What images!
+Gods and goddesses who hover in the highest heights of Heaven!  The
+blind old man, the long-wandering beggar-king, led by Antigone, has
+now been buried with holy rites; and his daughter, fair as the
+fairest dream ever conceived by human soul, resists the will of the
+tyrant and gives pious sepulture to her brother.  She loves the son
+of the tyrant, and that son loves her also.  And as she goes on her
+way to execution, the victim of her own sweet piety, the old men
+sing, "Invincible Love, O Thou who dost descend upon rich houses,--
+Thou who dost rest upon the delicate cheek of the maiden."...
+
+"Mademoiselle Jeanne, are you really very anxious to know what I am
+reading?  I am reading, Mademoiselle--I am reading that Antigone,
+having buried the blind old man, wove a fair tapestry embroidered
+with images in the likeness of laughing faces."
+
+"Ah!" said Gelis, as he burs out laughing "that is not in the text."
+
+"It is a scholium," I said.
+
+"Unpublished," he added, getting up.
+
+
+I am not an egotist.  But I am prudent.  I have to bring up this
+child; she is much too young to be married now.  No!  I am not an
+egotist, but I must certainly keep her with me for a few years more--
+keep her alone with me.  She can surely wait until I am dead!  Fear
+not, Antigone, old Oedipus will find holy burial soon enough.
+
+In the meanwhile, Antigone is helping our housekeeper to scrape the
+carrots.  She says she like to do it--that it is in her line, being
+related to the art of sculpture.
+
+
+May.
+
+
+Who would recognise the City of Books now?  There are flowers
+everywhere--even upon all the articles of furniture.  Jeanne was
+right:  those roses do look very nice in that blue china vase.  She
+goes to market every day with Therese, under the pretext of helping
+the old servant to make her purchases, but she never brings anything
+back with her except flowers.  Flowers are really very charming
+creatures.  And one of these days, I must certainly carry out my
+plan, and devote myself to the study of them, in their own natural
+domain, in the country--with all the science and earnestness which
+I possess.
+
+For what have I to do here?  Why should I burn my eyes out over these
+old parchments which cannot now tell me anything worth knowing?  I
+used to study them, these old texts, with the most ardent enjoyment.
+What was it which I was then so anxious to find in them?  The date
+of a pious foundation--the name of some monkish imagier or copyist--
+the price of a loaf, of an ox, or of a field--some judicial or
+administrative enactment--all that, and yet something more, a
+Something vaguely mysterious and sublime which excited my enthusiasm.
+But for sixty years I have been searching in vain for that Something.
+Better men than I--the masters, the truly great, the Fauriels, the
+Thierrys, who found so many things--died at their task without having
+been able, any more than I have been, to find that Something which,
+being incorporeal, has no name, and without which, nevertheless, no
+great mental work would ever be undertaken in this world.  And now
+that I am only looking for what I should certainly be able to find,
+I cannot find anything at all; and it is probable that I shall never
+be able to finish the history of the Abbots of Saint-Germain-des-
+Pres.
+
+"Guardian, just guess what I have in my handkerchief,"
+
+"Judging from appearances, Jeanne, I should say flowers."
+
+"Oh, no--not flowers.  Look!"
+
+I look, and I see a little grey head poking itself out of the
+handkerchief.  It is the head of a little grey cat.  The handkerchief
+opens; the animal leaps down upon the carpet, shakes itself, pricks
+up first one ear and then the other, and begins to examine with due
+caution the locality and the inhabitants thereof.
+
+Therese, out of breath, with her basket on her arm, suddenly makes
+her appearance in time to take an objective part in this examination,
+which does not appear to result altogether in her favour; for the
+young cat moves slowly away from her, without, however, venturing
+near my legs, or approaching Jeanne, who displays extraordinary
+volubility in the use of caressing appellations.  Therese, whose
+chief fault is her inability to hide her feelings, thereupon
+vehemently reproaches Mademoiselle for bringing home a cat that she
+did not know anything about.  Jeanne, in order to justify herself,
+tells the whole story.  While she was passing with Therese before
+a chemist's shop, she saw the assistant kick a little cat into the
+street.  The cat, astonished and frightened, seemed to be asking
+itself whether to remain in the street where it was being terrified
+and knocked about by the people passing by, or whether to go back
+into the chemist's even at the risk of being kicked out a second
+time.  Jeanne thought it was in a very critical position, and
+understood its hesitation.  It looked so stupid; and she knew it
+looked stupid only because it could not decide what to do.  So she
+took it up in her arms.   And as it had not been able to obtain
+any rest either indoors out out-of-doors, it allowed her to hold
+it.  Then she stroked and petted it to keep it from being afraid,
+and boldly went to the chemist's assistant and said,
+
+"If you don't like that animal, you mustn't beat it; you must give
+it to me."
+
+"Take it," said the assistant.
+
+..."Now there!" adds Jeanne, by way of conclusion; and then she
+changes her voice again to a flute-tone in order to say all kinds
+of sweet things to the cat.
+
+"He is horribly thin," I observe, looking at the wretched animal;--
+"moreover, he is horribly ugly."  Jeanne thinks he is not ugly at
+all, but she acknowledges that he looks even more stupid than he
+looked at first:  this time she thinks it not indecision, but
+surprise, which gives that unfortunate aspect to his countenance.
+She asks us to imagine ourselves in his place;--then we are obliged
+to acknowledge that he cannot possibly understand what has happened
+to him.  And then we all burst out laughing in the face of the poor
+little beast, which maintains the most comical look of gravity.
+Jeanne wants to take him up; but he hides himself under the table,
+and cannot even be tempted to come out by the lure of a saucer of
+milk.
+
+We all turn our backs and promise not to look; when we inspect the
+saucer again, we find it empty.
+
+"Jeanne," I observe, "your protege has a decidedly tristful aspect
+of countenance; he is of sly and suspicious disposition; I trust he
+is not going to commit in the City of Books any such misdemeanours
+as might render it necessary for us to send him back to his chemist's
+shop.  In the meantime we must give him a name.  Suppose we call him
+'Don Gris de Gouttiere'; but perhaps that is too long.  'Pill,'
+'Drug,' or 'Castor-oil' would be short enough, and would further
+serve to recall his early condition in life.  What do you think about
+it?
+
+"'Pill' would not sound bad," answers Jeanne, "but it would be very
+unkind to give him a name which would be always reminding him of
+the misery from which we saved him.  It would be making him pay too
+dearly for our hospitality.  Let us be more generous, and give him
+a pretty name, in hopes that he is going to deserve it.  See how
+he looks at us!  He knows that we are talking about him.  And now
+that he is no longer unhappy, he is beginning to look a great deal
+less stupid.  I am not joking!  Unhappiness does make people look
+stupid,--I am perfectly sure it does."
+
+"Well, Jeanne, if you like, we will call your protege Hannibal.
+The appropriateness of that name does not seem to strike you at once.
+But the Angora cat who preceded him here as an intimate of the City
+of Books, and to whom I was in the habit of telling all my secrets--
+for he was a very wise and discreet person--used to be called
+Hamilcar.  It is natural that this name should beget the other, and
+that Hannibal should succeed Hamilcar."
+
+We all agreed upon this point.
+
+"Hannibal!" cried Jeanne, "come here!"
+
+Hannibal, greatly frightened by the strange sonority of his own name,
+ran to hid himself under a bookcase in an orifice so small that a
+rat could not have squeezed himself into it.
+
+A nice way of doing credit to so great a name!
+
+
+I was in a good humour for working that day, and I had just dipped
+the nib of my pen into the ink-bottle when I heard some one ring.
+Should any one ever read these pages written by an unimaginative
+old man, he will be sure to laugh at the way that bell keeps ringing
+through my narrative, without ever announcing the arrival of a new
+personage or introducing any unexpected incident.  On the stage
+things are managed on the reverse principle.  Monsieur Scribe never
+has the curtain raised without good reason, and for the greater
+enjoyment of ladies and young misses.  That is art!  I would rather
+hang myself than write a play,--not that I despise life, but because
+I should never be able to invent anything amusing.  Invent!  In
+order to do that one must have received the gift of inspiration.
+It would be a very unfortunate thing for me to possess such a gift.
+Suppose I were to invent some monkling in my history of the Abbey
+of Saint-Germain-des-Pres!  What would our young erudites say?
+What a scandal for the School!  As for the Institute, it would say
+nothing and probably not even think about the matter either.  Even
+if my colleagues still write a little sometimes, they never read.
+They are of the opinion of Parny, who said,
+
+     "Une paisible indifference
+      Est la plus sage des vertus."
+     ["The most wise of the virtues is a calm indifference."]
+
+To be the least wise in order to become the most wise--this is
+precisely what those Buddhists are aiming at without knowing it.
+If there is any wiser wisdom than that I will go to Rome to report
+upon it....  And all this because Monsieur Gelis happened to ring
+the bell!
+
+This young man has latterly changed his manner completely with
+Jeanne.  He is now quite as serious as he used to be frivolous, and
+quite as silent as he used to be chatty.  And Jeanne follows his
+example.  We have reached the phase of passionate love under
+constraint.  For, old as I am, I cannot be deceived about it:
+these two children are violently and sincerely in love with each
+other.  Jeanne now avoids him--she hides herself in her room when
+he comes into the library--but how well she knows how to reach him
+when she is alone! alone at her piano!  Every evening she talks to
+him through the music she plays with a rich thrill of passional
+feeling which is the new utterance of her new soul.
+
+Well, why should I not confess it?  Why should I not avow my weakness?
+Surely my egotism would not become any less blameworthy by keeping
+it hidden from myself?  So I will write it.  Yes!  I was hoping for
+something else;--yes! I thought I was going to keep her all to myself,
+as my own child, as my own daughter--not always, of course, not even
+perhaps for very long, but just for a few short years more.  I am
+so old!  Could she not wait?  And, who knows?  With the help of the
+gout, I would not have imposed upon her patience too much.  That
+was my wish; that was my hope.  I had made my plans--I had not
+reckoned upon the coming of this wild young man.  But the mistake
+is none the less cruel because my reckoning happened to be wrong.
+And yet it seems to me that you are condemning yourself very rashly,
+friend Sylvestre Bonnard:  if you did want to keep this young girl
+a few years longer, it was quite as much in her own interest as in
+yours.  She has a great deal to learn yet, and you are not a master
+to be despised.  When that miserable notary Mouche--who subsequently
+committed his rascalities at so opportune a moment--paid you the
+honour of a visit, you explained to him your ideas of education with
+all the fervour of high enthusiasm.  Then you attempted to put that
+system of yours into practice;--Jeanne is certainly an ungrateful
+girl, and Gelis a much too seductive young man!
+
+But still,--unless I put him out of the house, which would be a
+detestably ill-mannered and ill-natured thing to do,--I must continue
+to receive him.  He has been waiting ever so long in my little
+parlour, in front of those Sevres vases with which King Louis Philippe
+so graciously presented me.  The Moissonneurs and the Pecheurs
+of Leopold Robert are painted upon those porcelain vases, which
+Gelis nevertheless dares to call frightfully ugly, with the warm
+approval of Jeanne, whom he has absolutely bewitched.
+
+"My dear lad, excuse me for having kept you waiting so long.  I had
+a little bit of work to finish."
+
+I am telling the truth.  Meditation is work, but of course Gelis
+does not know what I mean; he thinks I am referring to something
+archaeological, and, his question in regard to the health of
+Mademoiselle Jeanne having been answered by a "Very well indeed,"
+uttered in that extremely dry tone which reveals my moral authority
+as guardian, we begin to converse about historical subjects.  We
+first enter upon generalities.  Generalities are sometimes extremely
+serviceable.  I try to inculcate into Monsieur Gelis some respect
+for that generation of historians to which I belong.  I say to him,
+
+"History, which was formerly an art, and which afforded place for
+the fullest exercise of the imagination, has in our time become a
+science, the study of which demands absolute exactness of knowledge."
+
+Gelis asks leave to differ from me on this subject.  He tells me he
+does not believe that history is a science, or that it could possibly
+ever become a science.
+
+"In the first place," he says to me, "what is history?  The written
+representation of past events.  But what is an event?  Is it merely
+a commonplace fact?  It is any fact?  No!  You say yourself it is
+a noteworthy fact.  Now, how is the historian to tell whether a fact
+is noteworthy or not?  He judges it arbitrarily, according to his
+tastes and his caprices and his ideas--in short, as an artist?  For
+facts cannot by reason of their own intrinsic character be divided
+into historical facts and non-historical facts.  But any fact is
+something exceedingly complex.  Will the historian represent facts
+in all their complexity?  No, that is impossible.  Then he will
+represent them stripped of the greater part of the peculiarities
+which constituted them, and consequently lopped, mutilated,
+different from what they really were.  As for the inter-relation of
+facts, needless to speak of it!  If a so-called historical fact
+be brought into notice--as is very possible--by one or more facts
+which are not historical at all, and are for that very reason
+unknown, how is the historian going to establish the relation of
+these facts one to another?  And in saying this, Monsieur Bonnard,
+I am supposing that the historian has positive evidence before him,
+whereas in reality he feels confidence only in such or such a witness
+for sympathetic reasons.  History is not a science; it is an art,
+and one can succeed in that art only through the exercise of his
+faculty of imagination."
+
+Monsieur Gelis reminds me very much at this moment of a certain young
+fool whom I heard talking wildly one day in the garden of the
+Luxembourg, under the statue of Marguerite of Navarre.  But at another
+turn of the conversation we find ourselves face to face with Walter
+Scott, whose work my disdainful young friend pleases to term
+"rococo, troubadourish, and only fit to inspire somebody engaged in
+making designs for cheap bronze clocks."  Those are his very words!
+
+"Why!" I exclaim, zealous to defend the magnificent creator of 'The
+Bride of Lammermoor' and 'The Fair Maid of Perth,' "the whole past
+lives in those admirable novels of his;--that is history, that is
+epic!"
+
+"It is frippery," Gelis answers me.
+
+And,--will you believe it?--this crazy boy actually tells me that
+no matter how learned one may be, one cannot possibly know just how
+men used to live five or ten centuries ago, because it is only with
+the very greatest difficulty that one can picture them to oneself
+even as they were only ten or fifteen years ago.  In his opinion,
+the historical poem, the historical novel, the historical painting,
+are all, according to their kind, abominably false as branches of
+art.
+
+"In all the arts," he adds, "the artist can only reflect his own
+soul.  His work, no matter how it may be dressed up, is of necessity
+contemporary with himself, being the reflection of his own mind.
+What do we admire in the 'Divine  Comedy' unless it be the great
+soul of Dante?  And the marbles of Michael Angelo, what do they
+represent to us that is at all extraordinary unless it be Michael
+Angelo himself?  The artist either communicates his own life to
+his creations, or else merely whittles out puppets and dresses up
+dolls."
+
+What a torrent of paradoxes and irreverences!  But boldness in a
+young man is not displeasing to me.  Gelis gets up from his chair
+and sits down again.  I know perfectly well what is worrying him,
+and whom he is waiting for.  And now he begins to talk to me about
+his being able to make fifteen hundred francs a year, to which he
+can add the revenue he derives from a little property that he has
+inherited--two thousand francs a year more.  And I am not in the
+least deceived as to the purpose of these confidences on his part.
+I know perfectly well that he is only making his little financial
+statements in order to persuade me that he is comfortably
+circumstanced, steady, fond of home, comparatively independent--or,
+to put the matter in the fewest words possible, able to marry. 
+Quod erat demonstrandum,--as the geometricians say.
+
+He has got up and sat down just twenty times.  He now rises for the
+twenty-first time; and, as he has not been able to see Jeanne, he
+goes away feeling as unhappy as possible.
+
+The moment he has gone, Jeanne comes into the City of Books, under
+the pretext of looking for Hannibal.  She is also quite unhappy;
+and her voice becomes singularly plaintive as she calls her pet to
+give him some milk.  Look at that sad little face, Bonnard!  Tyrant,
+gaze upon thy work!  Thou hast been able to keep them from seeing
+each other; but they have now both of them the same expression of
+countenance, and thou mayest discern from that similarity of
+expression that in spite of thee they are united in thought. 
+Cassandra, be happy!  Bartholo, rejoice!  This is what it means to
+be a guardian!  Just see her kneeling down there on the carpet with
+Hannibal's head between her hands!
+
+Yes, caress the stupid animal!--pity him!--moan over him!--we know
+very well, you little rogue, the real cause of all these sighs and
+plaints!  Nevertheless, it makes a very pretty picture.  I look at
+it for a long time; then, throwing a glance around my library, I
+exclaim,
+
+"Jeanne, I am tired of all those books; we must sell them."
+
+
+September 20.
+
+
+It is done!--they are betrothed.  Gelis, who is an orphan, as Jeanne
+is, did not make his proposal to me in person.  He got one of his
+professors, an old colleague of mine, highly esteemed for his
+learning and character, to come to me on his behalf.  But what a
+love messenger!  Great Heavens!  A bear--neat a bear of the Pyrenees,
+but a literary bear, and this latter variety of bear is much more
+ferocious than the former.
+
+"Right or wrong (in my opinion wrong) Gelis says that he does not
+want any dowry; he takes your ward with nothing but her chemise.
+Say yes, and the thing is settled!  Make haste about it!  I want to
+show you two or three very curious old tokens from Lorraine which
+I am sure you never saw before."
+
+That is literally what he said to me.  I answered him that I would
+consult Jeanne, and I found no small pleasure in telling him that
+my ward had a dowry.
+
+Her dowry--there it is in front of me!  It is my library.  Henri and
+Jeanne have not even the faintest suspicion about it; and the fact
+is I am commonly believed to be much richer than I am.  I have the
+face of an old miser.  It is certainly a lying face; but its
+untruthfulness has often won for me a great deal of consideration.
+There is nobody so much respected in this world as a stingy rich man.
+
+I have consulted Jeanne,--but what was the need of listening for her
+answer?  It is done!  They are betrothed.
+
+It would ill become my character as well as my face to watch these
+young people any longer for the mere purpose of noting down their
+words and gestures.  Noli me tangere:--that is the maxim for all
+charming love affairs.  I know my duty.  It is to respect all the
+little secrets of that innocent soul intrusted to me.  Let these
+children love each other all they can!  Never a word of their
+fervent outpouring of mutual confidences, never a hint of their
+artless self-betrayals, will be set down in this diary by the old
+guardian whose authority was so gentle and so brief.
+
+At all events, I am not going to remain with my arms folded; and if
+they have their business to attend to, I have mine also.  I am
+preparing a catalogue of my books, with a view to having them all
+sold at auction.  It is a task which saddens and amuses me at the
+same time.  I linger over it, perhaps a good deal longer than I
+ought to do; turning the leaves of all those works which have become
+so familiar to my thought, to my touch, to my sight--even out of
+all necessity and reason.  But it is a farewell; and it has ever
+been in the nature of man to prolong a farewell.
+
+This ponderous volume here, which has served me so much for thirty
+long years, how can I leave it without according it every kindness
+that a faithful servant deserves?  And this one again, which has so
+often consoled me by its wholesome doctrines, must I not bow down
+before it for the last time, as to a Master?  But each time that I
+meet with a volume which led me into error, which ever afflicted me
+with false dates, omissions, lies, and other plagues of the
+archaeologist, I say to it with bitter joy:  "Go! imposter, traitor,
+false-witness! flee thou far away from me for ever;--vade retro!
+all absurdly covered with gold as thou art! and I pray it may befall
+thee--thanks to thy usurped reputation and thy comely morocco attire--
+to take thy place in the cabinet of some banker-bibliomaniac, whom
+thou wilt never be able to seduce as thou has seduced me, because
+he will never read one single line of thee."
+
+I laid aside some books I must always keep--those books which were
+given to me as souvenirs.  As I placed among them the manuscript of
+the "Golden Legend," I could not but kiss it in memory of Madame
+Trepof, who remained grateful to me in spite of her high position
+and all her wealth, and who became my benefactress merely to prove
+to me that she felt I had once done her a kindness....  Thus I had
+made a reserve.  It was then that, for the first time, I felt myself
+inclined to commit a deliberate crime.  All through that night I
+was strongly tempted; by morning the temptation had become
+irresistible.  Everybody else in the house was still asleep.  I got
+out of bed and stole softly from my room.
+
+Ye powers of darkness! ye phantoms of the night! if while lingering
+within my home after the crowing of the cock, you saw me stealing
+about on tiptoe in the City of Books, you certainly never cried out,
+as Madame Trepof did at Naples, "That old man has a good-natured
+round back!"  I entered the library; Hannibal, with his tail
+perpendicularly erected, came to rub himself against my legs and
+purr.  I seized a volume from its shelf, some venerable Gothic text
+or some noble poet of the Renaissance--the jewel, the treasure which
+I had been dreaming about all night, I seized it and slipped it away
+into the very bottom of the closet which I had reserved for those
+books I intended to retain, and which soon became full almost to
+bursting.  It is horrible to relate:  I was stealing from the dowry
+of Jeanne!  And when the crime had been consummated I set myself
+again sturdily to the task of cataloguing, until Jeanne came to
+consult me in regard to something about a dress or a trousseau.  I
+could not possibly understand just what she was talking about,
+through my total ignorance of the current vocabulary of dress-making
+and linen-drapery.  Ah! if a bride of the fourteenth century had
+come to talk to me about the apparel of her epoch, then, indeed, I
+should have been able to understand her language!  But Jeanne does
+not belong to my time, and I have to send her to Madame de Gabry,
+who on this important occasion will take the place of her mother.
+
+...Night has come!  Leaning from the window, we gaze at the vast
+sombre stretch of the city below us, pierced with multitudinous points
+of light.  Jeanne presses her hand to her forehead as she leans upon
+the window-bar, and seems a little sad.  And I say to myself as I
+watch her:  All changes even the most longed for, have their
+melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves:
+we must die to one life before we can enter into another!
+
+And as if answering my thought, the young girl murmurs to me,
+
+"My guardian, I am so happy; and still I feel as if I wanted to cry!"
+
+
+
+
+The Last Page
+
+
+August 21, 1869.
+
+Page eighty-seven....  Only twenty lines more and I shall have
+finished my book about insects and flowers.  Page eighty-seventh and
+last....  "As we have already seen, the visits of insects are of the
+utmost importance to plants; since their duty is to carry to the
+pistils the pollen of the stamens.  It seems also that the flower
+itself is arranged and made attractive for the purpose of inviting
+this nuptial visit.  I think I have been able to show that the
+nectary of the plant distils a sugary liquid which attracts the
+insects and obliges it to aid unconsciously in the work of direct
+or cross fertilisation.  The last method of fertilisation is the more
+common.  I have shown that flowers are coloured and perfumed so as
+to attract insects, and interiorly so constructed as to offer those
+visitors such a mode of access that they cannot penetrate into the
+corolla without depositing upon the stigma the pollen with which
+they have been covered.  My most venerated master Sprengel observes
+in regard to that fine down which lines the corolla of the wood-
+geranium:  'The wise Author of Nature has never created a single
+useless hair!'  I say in my turn:  If that Lily of the Valley whereof
+the Gospel makes mention is more richly clad than King Solomon in
+all his glory, its mantle of purple is a wedding-garment, and that
+rich apparel is necessary to the perpetuation of the species."
+
+"Brolles, August 21, 1869."
+
+[Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard was not aware that several very
+illustrious naturalists were making researches at the same time as he
+in regard to the relation between insects and plants.  He was not
+acquainted with the labours of Darwin, with those of Dr. Hermann
+Muller, nor with the observations of Sir John Lubbock.  It is worthy
+of note that the conclusions of Monsieur Sylvestre Bonnard are very
+nearly similar to those reached by the three scientists above
+mentioned.  Less important, but perhaps equally interesting, is the
+fact that Sir John Lubbock is, like Monsieur Bonnard, an archaeologist
+who began to devote himself only late in life to the natural
+sciences.--Note by the French Editor.]
+
+Brolles!  My house is the last one you pass in the single street of
+the village, as you go to the woods.  It is a gabled house with a
+slate roof, which takes iridescent tints in the sun like a pigeon's
+breast.  The weather-vane above that roof has won more consideration
+for me among the country people than all my works upon history and
+philology.  There is not a single child who does not know Monsieur
+Bonnard's weather-vane.  It is rusty, and squeaks very sharply in
+the wind.  Sometimes it refuses to do any work at all--just like
+Therese, who now allows herself to be assisted by a young peasant
+girl--though she grumbles a good deal about it.  The house is not
+large, but I am very comfortable in it.  My room has two windows,
+and gets the sun in the morning.  The children's room is upstairs.
+Jeanne and Henri come twice a year to occupy it.
+
+Little Sylvestre's cradle used to be in it.  He was a very pretty
+child, but very pale.  When he used to play on the grass, his mother
+would watch him very anxiously; and every little while she would
+stop her seweing in order to take him upon her lap.  The poor little
+fellow never wanted to go to sleep.  He used to say that when he
+was asleep he would go away, very far away, to some place where it
+was all dark, and where he saw things that made him afraid--things
+he never wanted to see again.
+
+Then his mother would call me, and I would sit down beside his cradle.
+He would take one of my fingers in his little dry warm hand, and say
+to me,
+
+"Godfather, you must tell me a story."
+
+Then I would tell him all kinds of stories, which he would listen to
+very seriously.  They all interested him, but there was one especially
+which filled his little soul with delight.  It was "The Blue Bird."
+Whenever I finished that, he would say to me, "Tell it again! tell
+it again!"  And I would tell it again until his little pale blue-
+veined head sank back upon the pillow in slumber.
+
+The doctor used to answer all our questions by saying,
+
+"There is nothing extraordinary the matter with him!"
+
+No!  There was nothing extraordinary the matter with little Sylvestre.
+One evening last year his father called me.
+
+"Come," he said, "the little one is still worse."
+
+I approached the cradle over which the mother hung motionless, as
+if tied down above it by all the powers of her soul.
+
+Little Sylvestre turned his eyes towards me; their pupils had already
+rolled up beneath his eyelids, and could not descend again.
+
+"Godfather," he said, "you are not to tell me any more stories."
+
+No, I was not to tell him any more stories!
+
+Poor Jeanne!--poor mother!
+
+I am too old now to feel very deeply; but how strangely painful a
+mystery is the death of a child!
+
+
+To-day, the father and mother have come to pass six weeks under the
+old man's roof.  I see them now returning from the woods, walking
+arm-in-arm.  Jeanne is closely wrapped in her black shawl, and Henri
+wears a crape band on his straw hat; but they are both of them
+radiant with youth, and they smile very sweetly at each other.  They
+smile at the earth which sustains them; they smile at the air which
+bathes them; they smile at the light which each one sees in the eyes
+of the other.  From my window I wave my handkerchief at them,--and
+they smile at my old age.
+
+Jeanne comes running lightly up the stairs; she kisses me, and then
+whispers in my ear something which I divine rather than hear.  And
+I make answer to her:  "May God's blessing be with you, Jeanne, and
+with your husband, and with your children, and with your children's
+children for ever!"...  Et nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, by France
+
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