rembling.

"'But it would have been nothing out of the common if you had been
prompted by self-love to put some money down on the table. In the eyes
of men of the world you are quite old enough to assume the right to
commit such follies. So I should have pardoned you, Raphael, if you had
made use of my purse.....'

"I did not answer. When we reached home, I returned the keys and money
to my father. As he entered his study, he emptied out his purse on the
mantelpiece, counted the money, and turned to me with a kindly look,
saying with more or less long and significant pauses between each
phrase:

"'My boy, you are very nearly twenty now. I am satisfied with you. You
ought to have an allowance, if only to teach you how to lay it out, and
to gain some acquaintance with everyday business. Henceforward I shall
let you have a hundred francs each month. Here is your first quarter's
income for this year,' he added, fingering a pile of gold, as if to make
sure that the amount was correct. 'Do what you please with it.'

"I confess that I was ready to fling myself at his feet, to tell him
that I was a thief, a scoundrel, and, worse than all, a liar! But a
feeling of shame held me back. I went up to him for an embrace, but he
gently pushed me away.

"'You are a man now, _my child_,' he said. 'What I have just done was a
very proper and simple thing, for which there is no need to thank me. If
I have any claim to your gratitude, Raphael,' he went on, in a kind but
dignified way, 'it is because I have preserved your youth from the evils
that destroy young men in Paris. We will be two friends henceforth. In
a year's time you will be a doctor of law. Not without some hardship and
privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and the love of, and
application to, work that is indispensable to public men. You must
learn to know me, Raphael. I do not want to make either an advocate or
a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the pride of our poor
house.... Good-night,' he added.

"From that day my father took me fully into confidence. I was an only
son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my father,
the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne, had come
to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the prospect
of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He was endowed
with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of France a certain
ascendency when energy g