d become of him if Aurora should be
out and that other in, he was startled by a loud, deep voice exclaiming,
close behind him:

"_Eh, bien! Monsieur le Professeur!_"

Frowenfeld knew by the tone, before he looked behind him, that he would
find M. Agricola Fusilier very red in the face; and when he looked, the
only qualification he could make was that the citizen's countenance was
not so ruddy as the red handkerchief in which his arm was hanging.

"What have you there?" slowly continued the patriarch, taking his free
hand off his fettered arm and laying it upon the page as Frowenfeld
hurriedly rose, and endeavored to shut the book.

"Some private memoranda," answered the meteorologist, managing to get
one page turned backward, reddening with confusion and indignation, and
noticing that Agricola's spectacles were upside down.

"Private! Eh? No such thing, sir! Professor Frowenfeld, allow me" (a
classic oath) "to say to your face, sir, that you are the most brilliant
and the most valuable man--of your years--in afflicted Louisiana! Ha!"
(reading:) "'Morning observation; Cathedral clock, 7 A.M. Thermometer 70
degrees.' Ha! 'Hygrometer l5'--but this is not to-day's weather? Ah! no.
Ha! 'Barometer 30.380.' Ha! 'Sky cloudy, dark; wind, south, light.' Ha!
'River rising.' Ha! Professor Frowenfeld, when will you give your
splendid services to your section? You must tell me, my son, for I ask
you, my son, not from curiosity, but out of impatient interest."

"I cannot say that I shall ever publish my tables," replied the "son,"
pulling at the book.

"Then, sir, in the name of Louisiana," thundered the old man, clinging
to the book, "I can! They shall be published! Ah! yes, dear Frowenfeld.
The book, of course, will be in French, eh? You would not so affront the
most sacred prejudices of the noble people to whom you owe everything as
to publish it in English? You--ah! have we torn it?"

"I do not write French," said the apothecary, laying the torn edges
together.

"Professor Frowenfeld, men are born for each other. What do I behold
before me? I behold before me, in the person of my gifted young friend,
a supplement to myself! Why has Nature strengthened the soul of Agricola
to hold the crumbling fortress of this body until these eyes--which were
once, my dear boy, as proud and piercing as the battle-steed's--have
become dim?"

Joseph's insurmountable respect for gray hairs kept him standing, but
he did not respond with a