e
with confidence to lay them before you, to ask you to listen to me, to
answer me, and to tell me by what studies I can pursue the search for
light. It is a cruelly afflicted soul that appeals to you. Is not that a
good ground for the seed of your word?"

The Abbe Gondrin eagerly protested the joy with which, notwithstanding
his own insufficiency, he would undertake to reply to the scruples of
conscience in the young savant. After asking him for a place in his
friendship, and telling him to come at certain hours for conversation,
he asked him to read, as a first step, the "Thoughts" of Pascal.
A natural affinity, on the side of science, would, he believed,
be established between the spirit of Pascal and that of the young
mathematician.

While this scene was passing, a scene to which the greatness of the
interests in question and the moral and intellectual elevation of the
personages concerned in it gave a character of grandeur which, like
all reposeful, tranquil aspects, is easier far to comprehend than to
reproduce, another scene, of sharp and bitter discord, that chronic
malady of bourgeois households, where the pettiness of minds and
passions gives open way to it, was taking place in the Thuillier home.

Mounted upon her chair, her hair in disorder and her face and fingers
dirty, Brigitte, duster in hand, was cleaning the shelves of the closet,
where she was replacing her library of plates, dishes, and sauce-boats,
when Flavie came in and accosted her.

"Brigitte," she said, "when you have finished what you are about you had
better come down to our apartment, or else I'll send Celeste to you; she
seems to me to be inclined to make trouble."

"In what way?" asked Brigitte, continuing to dust.

"I think she and Madame Thuillier went to see the Abbe Gondrin this
morning, and she has been attacking me about Felix Phellion, and talks
of him as if he were a god; from that to refusing to marry la Peyrade is
but a step."

"Those cursed skull-caps!" said Brigitte; "they meddle in everything! I
didn't want to invite him, but you would insist."

"Yes," said Flavie, "it was proper."

"Proper! I despise proprieties!" cried the old maid. "He's a maker of
speeches; he said nothing last night that wasn't objectionable. Send
Celeste to me; I'll settle her."

At this instant a servant announced to Brigitte the arrival of a clerk
from the office of the new notary chosen, in default of Dupuis, to draw
up the contract. With