heels with great agility.

The same evening the new Assistant was summoned to the Director's
presence and received his dismissal.

"Unhappy boy! unhappy boy!" said the Abbe Bordier, beating his
brow; "you have been the cause of an intolerable scandal, of a
sort unheard of in this house, and that just when I had so much
to do."

And as he spoke, the scattered papers fluttered like white birds
on the Director's table.

Making his way through the parlour, Jean saw the _Mater dolorosa_
as before, and read again the names of Philippe-Guy Thiererche
and the Countess Valentine.

"I hate them," he muttered through clenched teeth, "I hate them
all."

Meantime, the good priest felt a stir of pity. Every day they
had badgered him with reports against Jean Servien. This time he
had given way; he had sacrificed the young usher; but he really
could make nothing of this tale about a beggar. He changed his
mind, ran to the door and called to the young man to corne back.

Jean turned and faced him:

"No!" he cried, "no! I can bear the life no longer; I am unhappy,
I am full of misery--and hate."

"Poor lad!" sight the Director, letting his arms drop by his side.

That evening he did not write a single line of his Tragedy.

XXVII

The kind-hearted bookbinder harassed his son with no reproaches.

After dinner he went and sat at his shop-door, and looked at the
first star that peeped out in the evening sky.

"My boy," said he, "I am not a man of learning like you; but
I have a notion--and you must not rob me of it, because it is
a comfort to me--that, when I have finished binding books, I
shall go to that star. The idea occurred to me from what I have
read in the paper that the stars are all worlds. What is that
star called?"

"Venus, father."

"In my part of the world, they say it is the shepherd's star.
It's a beautiful star, and I think your mother is there. That
is why I should like to go there."

The old man passed his knotted fingers across his brow, murmuring:

"God forgive me, how one forgets those who are gone!"

Jean sought balm for his wounded spirit in reading poetry and in
long, dreamy walks. His head was filled with visions--a welter of
sublime imaginings, in which floated such figures as Ophelia and
Cassandra, Gretchen, Delia, Phaedra, Manon Lescaut, and Virginia,
and hovering amid these, shadows still nameless, still almost
formless, and yet full of seduction! Holding bowls and daggers
a