in this key.

Then he went home again to find Mme. Postel jealous of Mme. Sechard,
and furious with her spouse for his polite attention to that beautiful
woman. The apothecary advanced the opinion that little red-haired women
were preferable to tall, dark women, who, like fine horses, were always
in the stable, he said. He gave proofs of his sincerity, no doubt, for
Mme. Postel was very sweet to him next day.

"We may be easy," Eve said to her mother and Marion, whom she found
still "in a taking," in the latter's phrase.

"Oh! they are gone," said Marion, when Eve looked unthinkingly round the
room.

One league out of Angouleme on the main road to Paris, Kolb stopped.

"Vere shall we go?"

"To Marsac," said David; "since we are on the way already, I will try
once more to soften my father's heart."

"I would rader mount to der assault of a pattery," said Kolb, "your
resbected fader haf no heart whatefer."

The ex-pressman had no belief in his son; he judged him from the outside
point of view, and waited for results. He had no idea, to begin with,
that he had plundered David, nor did he make allowance for the very
different circumstances under which they had begun life; he said to
himself, "I set him up with a printing-house, just as I found it myself;
and he, knowing a thousand times more than I did, cannot keep it going."
He was mentally incapable of understanding his son; he laid the blame of
failure upon him, and even prided himself, as it were on his superiority
to a far greater intellect than his own, with the thought, "I am
securing his bread for him."

Moralists will never succeed in making us comprehend the full extent of
the influence of sentiment upon self-interest, an influence every whit
as strong as the action of interest upon our sentiments; for every law
of our nature works in two ways, and acts and reacts upon us.

David, on his side, understood his father, and in his sublime charity
forgave him. Kolb and David reached Marsac at eight o'clock, and
suddenly came in upon the old man as he was finishing his dinner, which,
by force of circumstances, came very near bedtime.

"I see you because there is no help for it," said old Sechard with a
sour smile.

"Und how should you and mein master meet? He soars in der shkies, and
you are always mit your vines! You bay for him, that's vot you are a
fader for----"

"Come, Kolb, off with you. Put up the horse at Mme. Courtois' so as
to save inconve