e
littered table a thick book which, to his surprise, he found to be a
French educational work, one of those manuals for the _baccalaureat_,*
containing a digest of the knowledge which the official programmes
require. It was but a humble, practical, elementary work, yet it
necessarily dealt with all the mathematical, physical, chemical, and
natural sciences, thus broadly outlining the intellectual conquests of
the century, the present phase of human knowledge.

* The examination for the degree of bachelor, which degree is
the necessary passport to all the liberal professions in France.
M. Zola, by the way, failed to secure it, being ploughed for
"insufficiency in literature"!--Trans.

"Ah!" exclaimed Orlando, well pleased with the diversion, "you are
looking at the book of my old friend Theophile Morin. He was one of the
thousand of Marsala, you know, and helped us to conquer Sicily and
Naples. A hero! But for more than thirty years now he has been living in
France again, absorbed in the duties of his petty professorship, which
hasn't made him at all rich. And so he lately published that book, which
sells very well in France it seems; and it occurred to him that he might
increase his modest profits on it by issuing translations, an Italian one
among others. He and I have remained brothers, and thinking that my
influence would prove decisive, he wishes to utilise it. But he is
mistaken; I fear, alas! that I shall be unable to get anybody to take up
his book."

At this Luigi Prada, who had again become very composed and amiable,
shrugged his shoulders slightly, full as he was of the scepticism of his
generation which desired to maintain things in their actual state so as
to derive the greatest profit from them. "What would be the good of it?"
he murmured; "there are too many books already!"

"No, no!" the old man passionately retorted, "there can never be too many
books! We still and ever require fresh ones! It's by literature, not by
the sword, that mankind will overcome falsehood and injustice and attain
to the final peace of fraternity among the nations--Oh! you may smile; I
know that you call these ideas my fancies of '48, the fancies of a
greybeard, as people say in France. But it is none the less true that
Italy is doomed, if the problem be not attacked from down below, if the
people be not properly fashioned. And there is only one way to make a
nation, to create men, and that is to educate them, t