up an arm.

"I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error"--his eyes
quailed and dropped to the floor--"but I--your arm, my dear Joseph; age
is creeping upon me." He rose to his feet. "I am feeling really
indisposed to-day--not at all bright; my solicitude for you, my
dear b--"

He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the apothecary,
moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the table stumbled
into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him. He folded his arms on
the edge of the board and rested his forehead on them, while Frowenfeld
sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew paper and pen across the
table and wrote.

"Are you writing something, Professor?" asked the old man, without
stirring. His staff tumbled to the floor. The apothecary's answer was a
low, preoccupied one. Two or three times over he wrote and rejected what
he had written.

Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid the
writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and waited.

After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to conceal his
anguish under a smile.

"I have a sad headache."

He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen which
Frowenfeld extended toward him.

"What can I do for you, Professor? Sign something? There is nothing I
would not do for Professor Frowenfeld. What have you written, eh?"

He felt helplessly for his spectacles.

Frowenfeld read:

"_Mr. Sylvestre Grandissime: I spoke in haste_."

He felt himself tremble as he read. Agricola fumbled with the pen,
lifted his eyes with one more effort at the old look, said, "My dear
boy, I do this purely to please you," and to Frowenfeld's delight and
astonishment wrote:

"_Your affectionate uncle, Agricola Fusilier_."

CHAPTER XXXIX

LOUISIANA STATES HER WANTS

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Raoul as that person turned in the front door
of the shop after watching Agricola's carriage roll away--he had
intended to unburden his mind to the apothecary with all his natural
impetuosity; but Frowenfeld's gravity as he turned, with the paper in
his hand, induced a different manner. Raoul had learned, despite all the
impulses of his nature, to look upon Frowenfeld with a sort of
enthusiastic awe. He dropped his voice and said--asking like a child a
question he was perfectly able to answer--

"What de matta wid Agricole?"

Frowenfeld, for the moment well-nigh oblivious of his ow