l of destiny.

"Do you love me?" he asked.

"Do I love you? Is there any doubt?"

"Then, leave me, go away!"

The poor child went.

"So!" cried Raphael, when he was alone. "In an enlightened age, when we
have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at
a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new
Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie
des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a
notary's signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of _Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme
Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see
the learned about it."

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive assembly of barrels, and
the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small
pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties
were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the
sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the
world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind
of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but luckily without
either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from
sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

"That is M. Lavrille," said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked
for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by
the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged;
he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression,
but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His
peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch
his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a
witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other
strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we
lose all consciousness of the "I" within us. Raphael, the student and
man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his
nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors
reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have laughed,
no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped
waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was
modestly filled