ieurs, who is this Christopher Columbus of a new celestial world? An
old man, two-thirds blind, who has scarcely eyes enough to walk in the
street."

"Wonderful! Marvellous! Admirable!" came from all sides.

"What is the name of this learned man?" asked several voices.

"Monsieur Picot, or, if you prefer it, pere Picot, for that is how they
call him in the rue du Val-de-Grace, where he lives. He is simply an
old professor of mathematics, who has turned out several very fine
pupils,--by the bye, Felix Phellion, whom we all know, studied under
him, and it was he who read, on behalf of his blind old master, the
communication to the Academy this afternoon."

Hearing that name, and remembering the promise Felix had made her to
lift her to the skies, which, as he said it, she had fancied a sign
of madness, Celeste looked at Madame Thuillier, whose face had taken a
sudden glow of animation, and seemed to say to her, "Courage, my child!
all is not lost."

"My dear Theodose," said Thuillier, "Felix is coming here to-night;
you must take him aside and get him to give you a copy of that
communication; it would be a fine stroke of fortune for the 'Echo' to be
the first to publish it."

"Yes," said Minard, assuming the answer, "that would do good service
to the public, for the affair is going to make a great noise. The
committee, not finding Monsieur Picot at home, went straight to the
Minister of Public Instruction; and the minister flew to the Tuileries
and saw the King; and the 'Messager' came out this evening--strange to
say, so early that I could read it in my carriage as I drove along--with
an announcement that Monsieur Picot is named Chevalier of the Legion of
honor, with a pension of eighteen hundred francs from the fund devoted
to the encouragement of science and letters."

"Well," said Thuillier, "there's one cross at least well bestowed."

"But eighteen hundred francs for the pension seems to me rather paltry,"
said Dutocq.

"So it does," said Thuillier, "and all the more because that money comes
from the tax-payers; and, when one sees the taxes, as we do, frittered
away on court favorites--"

"Eighteen hundred francs a year," interrupted Minard, "is certainly
something, especially for savants, a class of people who are accustomed
to live on very little."

"I think I have heard," said la Peyrade, "that this very Monsieur Picot
leads a strange life, and that his family, who at first wanted to shut
him up as a