rstand? The reason of it? Ah, my word, that is just
what nobody on earth knows but himself and God Almighty. It is quite
_inconciliable_!"

"He is writing a poem!" exclaimed the old professor.

"You think he is writing a poem, sir? It's a very absorbing affair,
then! But, you know, I don't think he is. He often tells me that he
wants to live like a _vergetation_; he wants to _vergetate_. Only
yesterday he was looking at a tulip while he was dressing, and he said
to me:

"'There is my own life--I am _vergetating_, my poor Jonathan.' Now, some
of them insist that that is monomania. It is _inconciliable_!"

"All this makes it very clear to me, Jonathan," the professor answered,
with a magisterial solemnity that greatly impressed the old servant,
"that your master is absorbed in a great work. He is deep in
vast meditations, and has no wish to be distracted by the petty
preoccupations of ordinary life. A man of genius forgets everything
among his intellectual labors. One day the famous Newton----"

"Newton?--oh, ah! I don't know the name," said Jonathan.

"Newton, a great geometrician," Porriquet went on, "once sat for
twenty-four hours leaning his elbow on the table; when he emerged from
his musings, he was a day out in his reckoning, just as if he had been
sleeping. I will go to see him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use
to him."

"Not for a moment!" Jonathan cried. "Not though you were King of
France--I mean the real old one. You could not go in unless you forced
the doors open and walked over my body. But I will go and tell him you
are here, M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, 'Ought he
to come up?' And he will say Yes or No. I never say, 'Do you wish?'
or 'Will you?' or 'Do you want?' Those words are scratched out of the
dictionary. He let out at me once with a 'Do you want to kill me?' he
was so very angry."

Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, signing to him to
come no further, and soon returned with a favorable answer. He led the
old gentleman through one magnificent room after another, where every
door stood open. At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance
seated beside the fire.

Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair wrapped in a
dressing-gown with some large pattern on it. The intense melancholy that
preyed upon him could be discerned in his languid posture and feeble
frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked like some
plant