. Recognizing it instantly, Felix hastened to
say:--

"A letter from the professor"; then, before breaking the seal, he added,
"Will you permit me, Monsieur le maire."

"He'll rate you finely," said Minard, laughing. "I never saw anything so
comical as his wrath last night."

Felix, as he read the letter, smiled to himself. When he had finished
it, he passed it to his father, saying:--

"Read it aloud if you like."

Whereupon, with his solemn voice and manner, Phellion read as follows:--

My dear Felix,--I have just received your note; it came in the
nick of time, for I was, as they say, in a fury with you. You tell
me that you were guilty of that abuse of confidence (about which I
intended to write you a piece of my mind) in order to give a
knock-down blow to my relations by proving that a man capable of
making such complicated calculations as your discovery required
was not a man to put in a lunatic asylum or drag before a
judiciary council. That argument pleases me, and it makes such a
good answer to the infamous proceedings of my relations that I
praise you for having had the idea. But you sold it to me, that
argument, pretty dear when you put me in company with a star, for
you know very well _that_ propinquity wouldn't please me at all. It
is not at my age, and after solving the great problem of perpetual
motion, that a man could take up with such rubbish as that,--good
only for boys and greenhorns like you; and that is what I have
taken the liberty this morning to go and tell the minister of
public instruction, by whom I must say I was received with the
most perfect urbanity. I asked him to see whether, as he had made
a mistake and sent them to the wrong address, he could not take
back his cross and his pension,--though to be sure, as I told him,
I deserved them for other things.

"The government," he replied, "is not in the habit of making
mistakes; what it does is always properly done, and it never
annuls an ordinance signed by the hand of his Majesty. Your great
labors have deserved the two favors the King has granted you; it
is a long-standing debt, which I am happy to pay off in his name."

"But Felix?" I said; "because after all for a young man it is not
such a bad discovery."

"Monsieur Felix Phellion," replied the minister, "will receive in
the course of the day his appointment to the rank of Chevalier of
the Legion of honor; I will