led Picrochole has
recently come on the scene who wants to make a bankrupt of science in
order to do a good turn to the Church. And just lately Pragmatism has
been invented for the express purpose of gaining credit for religion in
the minds of rationalists."

"You have been studying Pragmatism?"

"Not I! I was frivolous once, and I went in for metaphysics. I read
Hegel and Kant. I have become serious with years, and now I only trouble
myself about things evident to the senses: what the eye can see or what
the ear can hear. Man is summed up in Art. All the rest is moonshine."

Thus the conversation went on until evening; it was marked by
obscenities that would have brought a blush--I will not say to a
cuirassier, for cuirassiers are frequently chaste, but even to a
Parisienne.

Monsieur Sariette came to see his old pupil. When he entered the room
the bust of Alexandre d'Esparvieu seemed to take shape behind the
librarian's bald head. He drew near the bed. In the place of blue
curtains, mirrored wardrobe, and chimney-piece, there straightway came
into view the heavy-laden bookcases of the room of the globes and busts,
and the air was heavy with piles of papers, records, and files. Monsieur
Sariette could not be dissociated from his library; one could not
conceive of him or even see him apart from it. He himself was paler,
more vague, more shadowy, and more a creature of the fancy than the
fancies he evoked.

Maurice, who had grown very quiet, was sensible of this mark of
friendship.

"Sit down, Monsieur Sariette,--you know Madame des Aubels. May I
introduce Arcade to you,--my guardian angel. It was he who, while yet
invisible, pillaged your library for two years, made you lose all desire
for food and drink, and drove you to the verge of madness. He it was who
moved piles of books from the room of the busts to my summer-house one
day; under your very nose, he took away I know not what precious
volumes; and was the cause of your falling on the staircase; another day
he took a volume of Salomon Reinach's, and, forced to go out with me
(for he never left me, as I have learnt later), he let the volume drop
in the gutter of the Rue Princesse. Forgive him, Monsieur Sariette,--he
had no pockets. He was invisible. I bitterly regret, Monsieur Sariette,
that all your old books were not devoured by fire or swallowed up by a
flood. They made my angel lose his head. He became man, and now knows
neither faith nor obedience to la