has taken a bad turn, no doubt?"

Lucien shrugged his shoulders very significantly.

"Are you resolved to kill yourself to escape dishonor, or do you
despair of life? Very good. You can kill yourself at Poitiers quite as
easily as at Angouleme, and at Tours it will be no harder than at
Poitiers. The quicksands of the Loire never give up their prey----"

"No, father," said Lucien; "I have settled it all. Not three weeks ago
I chanced upon the most charming raft that can ferry a man sick and
tired of this life into the other world----"

"The other world? You are not an atheist."

"Oh! by another world I mean my next transformation, animal or plant."

"Have you some incurable disease?"

"Yes, father."

"Ah! now we come to the point. What is it?"

"Poverty."

The priest looked at Lucien. "The diamond does not know its own
value," he said, and there was an inexpressible charm, and a touch of
something like irony in his smile.

"None but a priest could flatter a poor man about to die," exclaimed
Lucien.

"You are not going to die," the Spaniard returned authoritatively.

"I have heard many times of men that were robbed on the highroad, but
I have never yet heard of one that found a fortune there," said
Lucien.

"You will hear of one now," said the priest, glancing towards the
carriage to measure the time still left for their walk together.
"Listen to me," he continued, with his cigar between his teeth; "if
you are poor, that is no reason why you should die. I need a
secretary, for mine has just died at Barcelona. I am in the same
position as the famous Baron Goertz, minister of Charles XII. He was
traveling toward Sweden (just as I am going to Paris), and in some
little town or other he chanced upon the son of a goldsmith, a young
man of remarkable good looks, though they could scarcely equal yours.
. . . Baron Goertz discerned intelligence in the young man (just as I
see poetry on your brow); he took him into his traveling carriage, as
I shall take you very shortly; and of a boy condemned to spend his
days in burnishing spoons and forks and making trinkets in some little
town like Angouleme, he made a favorite, as you shall be mine.

"Arrived at Stockholm, he installed his secretary and overwhelmed him
with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all
great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick--he took to chewing
paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles