ny conjecture as to Nature's intentions, and
there was a stern silence.

The crumbling fortress resumed, his voice pitched low like the beginning
of the long roll. He knew Nature's design.

"It was in order that you, Professor Frowenfeld, might become my vicar!
Your book shall be in French! We must give it a wide scope! It shall
contain valuable geographical, topographical, biographical, and
historical notes. It shall contain complete lists of all the officials
in the province (I don't say territory, I say province) with their
salaries and perquisites; ah! we will expose that! And--ha! I will write
some political essays for it. Raoul shall illustrate it. Honore shall
give you money to publish it. Ah! Professor Frowenfeld, the star of your
fame is rising out of the waves of oblivion! Come--I dropped in
purposely to ask you--come across the street and take a glass of
_taffia_ with Agricola Fusilier."

This crowning honor the apothecary was insane enough to decline, and
Agricola went away with many professions of endearment, but secretly
offended because Joseph had not asked about his wound.

All the same the apothecary, without loss of time, departed for the
yellow-washed cottage, Number 19 rue Bienville.

"To-morrow, at four P.M.," he said to himself, "if the weather is
favorable, I ride with M. Grandissime."

He almost saw his books and instruments look up at him reproachfully.

The ladies were at home. Aurora herself opened the door, and Clotilde
came forward from the bright fireplace with a cordiality never before so
unqualified. There was something about these ladies--in their simple,
but noble grace, in their half-Gallic, half-classic beauty, in a jocund
buoyancy mated to an amiable dignity--that made them appear to the
scholar as though they had just bounded into life from the garlanded
procession of some old fresco. The resemblance was not a little helped
on by the costume of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and
belated by the distance from Paris). Their black hair, somewhat heavier
on Clotilde's head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted _en
Grecque_, and adorned only with the spoils of a nosegay given to
Clotilde by a chivalric small boy in the home of her music scholar.

"We was expectin' you since several days," said Clotilde, as the three
sat down before the fire, Frowenfeld in a cushioned chair whose
moth-holes had been carefully darned.

Frowenfeld intimated, with tolerable co