al,
surrounded by a red line accurately traced about its prophetic outlines.
Since that fatal carouse, Raphael had stifled every least whim, and
had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible
talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live
without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the
old schoolmaster's prolixity.

Porriquet spent an hour in telling him about the persecutions directed
against him ever since the Revolution of July. The worthy man, having
a liking for strong governments, had expressed the patriotic wish that
grocers should be left to their counters, statesmen to the management of
public business, advocates to the Palais de Justice, and peers of France
to the Luxembourg; but one of the popularity-seeking ministers of the
Citizen King had ousted him from his chair, on an accusation of Carlism,
and the old man now found himself without pension or post, and with no
bread to eat. As he played the part of guardian angel to a poor nephew,
for whose schooling at Saint Sulpice he was paying, he came less on his
own account than for his adopted child's sake, to entreat his former
pupil's interest with the new minister. He did not ask to be reinstated,
but only for a position at the head of some provincial school.

QRaphael had fallen a victim to unconquerable drowsiness by the time
that the worthy man's monotonous voice ceased to sound in his ears.
Civility had compelled him to look at the pale and unmoving eyes of
the deliberate and tedious old narrator, till he himself had reached
stupefaction, magnetized in an inexplicable way by the power of inertia.

"Well, my dear pere Porriquet," he said, not very certain what the
question was to which he was replying, "but I can do nothing for you,
nothing at all. _I wish very heartily_ that you may succeed----"

All at once, without seeing the change wrought on the old man's sallow
and wrinkled brow by these conventional phrases, full of indifference
and selfishness, Raphael sprang to his feet like a startled roebuck.
He saw a thin white line between the black piece of hide and the red
tracing about it, and gave a cry so fearful that the poor professor was
frightened by it.

"Old fool! Go!" he cried. "You will be appointed as headmaster! Couldn't
you have asked me for an annuity of a thousand crowns rather than a
murderous wish? Your visit would have cost me nothing. There are a
hundred thousand situations