d the
household of Monsieur Picot.

"Monsieur Picot married to a rich Englishwoman!" exclaimed la Peyrade,
interrupting himself again; "but it is incomprehensible."

"Go on, I tell you," said Corentin; "you'll comprehend it presently."

The fortune of my new master,

continued la Peyrade,

is quite a history; and I speak of it to Monsieur le directeur
because another person in whom Madame de Godollo was interested
has his marriage closely mixed up in it. That other person is
Monsieur Felix Phellion, the inventor of a star, who, in despair
at not being able to marry that demoiselle whom they wanted to
give to the Sieur la Peyrade whom Madame de Godollo made such a
fool of--

"Scoundrel!" said the Provencal, in a parenthesis. "Is that how he
speaks of me? He doesn't know who I am."

Corentin laughed heartily and exhorted his pupil to read on.

--who, in despair at not being able to marry that demoiselle . . .
went to England in order to embark for a journey round the world
--a lover's notion! Learning of this departure, Monsieur Picot,
his former professor, who took great interest in his pupil, went
after him to prevent that nonsense, which turned out not to be
difficult. The English are naturally very jealous of discoveries,
and when they saw Monsieur Phellion coming to embark at the heels
of their own savants they asked him for his permit from the
Admiralty; which, not having been provided, he could not produce;
so then they laughed in his face and would not let him embark at
all, fearing that he should prove more learned than they.

"He is a fine hand at the 'entente cordiale,' your Monsieur Henri," said
la Peyrade, gaily.

"Yes," replied Corentin; "you will be struck, in the reports of
nearly all our agents, with this general and perpetual inclination to
calumniate. But what's to be done? For the trade of spies we can't have
angels."

Left upon the shore, Telemachus and his mentor--

"You see our men are lettered," commented Corentin.

--Telemachus and his mentor thought best to return to France, and
were about to do so when Monsieur Picot received a letter such as
none but an Englishwoman could write. It told him that the writer
had read his "Theory of Perpetual Motion," and had also heard of
his magnificent discovery of a star; that she regarded him as a
genius only second to Newton, and that if the hand of her who
addressed him, joined to eig