f blunders,
in the situation in which he now stands with the sister he ought not to
have chosen this moment to put an end to these lessons."

The Phellions looked at each other as if consulting how to reply.

"My son," said Madame Phellion, "is not exactly ill; but since you
mention a fact which is, I acknowledge, very strange and quite out of
keeping with his nature and habits, I think it right to tell you that
from the day when Celeste seemed to signify that all was at an end
between them, a very extraordinary change has come over Felix, which is
causing Monsieur Phellion and myself the deepest anxiety."

"Yes, madame," said Phellion, "the young man is certainly not in his
normal condition."

"But what is the matter with him?" asked the countess, anxiously.

"The night of that scene with Celeste," replied Phellion, "after his
return home, he wept a flood of hot tears on his mother's bosom, and
gave us to understand that the happiness of his whole life was at an
end."

"And yet," said Madame de Godollo, "nothing very serious happened; but
lovers always make the worst of things."

"No doubt," said Madame Phellion; "but since that night Felix has not
made the slightest allusion to his misfortune, and the next day he went
back to his work with a sort of frenzy. Does that seem natural to you?"

"It is capable of explanation; work is said to be a great consoler."

"That is most true," said Phellion; "but in Felix's whole personality
there is something excited, and yet repressed, which is difficult to
describe. You speak to him, and he hardly seems to hear you; he
sits down to table and forgets to eat, or takes his food with an
absent-mindedness which the medical faculty consider most injurious to
the process of digestion; his duties, his regular occupations, we have
to remind him of--him, so extremely regular, so punctual! The other day,
when he was at the Observatory, where he now spends all his evenings,
only coming home in the small hours, I took it upon myself to enter his
room and examine his papers. I was terrified, madame, at finding a paper
covered with algebraic calculations which, by their vast extent appeared
to me to go beyond the limits of the human intellect."

"Perhaps," said the countess, "he is on the road to some great
discovery."

"Or to madness," said Madame Phellion, in a low voice, and with a heavy
sigh.

"That is not probable," said Madame de Godollo; "with an organization
so calm and a