into the fire! No, leave me to the Church. I can please no
one now but God. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be my
last flirtation; yes, I must try to come round God!"

"That is my poor Valerie's last jest; that is all herself!" said Lisbeth
in tears.

Lisbeth thought it her duty to go into Crevel's room, where she found
Victorin and his wife sitting about a yard away from the stricken man's
bed.

"Lisbeth," said he, "they will not tell me what state my wife is in; you
have just seen her--how is she?"

"She is better; she says she is saved," replied Lisbeth, allowing
herself this play on the word to soothe Crevel's mind.

"That is well," said the Mayor. "I feared lest I had been the cause of
her illness. A man is not a traveler in perfumery for nothing; I had
blamed myself.--If I should lose her, what would become of me? On my
honor, my children, I worship that woman."

He sat up in bed and tried to assume his favorite position.

"Oh, Papa!" cried Celestine, "if only you could be well again, I would
make friends with my stepmother--I make a vow!"

"Poor little Celestine!" said Crevel, "come and kiss me."

Victorin held back his wife, who was rushing forward.

"You do not know, perhaps," said the lawyer gently, "that your disease
is contagious, monsieur."

"To be sure," replied Crevel. "And the doctors are quite proud of having
rediscovered in me some long lost plague of the Middle Ages, which the
Faculty has had cried like lost property--it is very funny!"

"Papa," said Celestine, "be brave, and you will get the better of this
disease."

"Be quite easy, my children; Death thinks twice of it before carrying
off a Mayor of Paris," said he, with monstrous composure. "And if, after
all, my district is so unfortunate as to lose a man it has twice honored
with its suffrages--you see, what a flow of words I have!--Well, I shall
know how to pack up and go. I have been a commercial traveler; I am
experienced in such matters. Ah! my children, I am a man of strong
mind."

"Papa, promise me to admit the Church--"

"Never," replied Crevel. "What is to be said? I drank the milk of
Revolution; I have not Baron Holbach's wit, but I have his strength of
mind. I am more _Regence_ than ever, more Musketeer, Abbe Dubois, and
Marechal de Richelieu! By the Holy Poker!--My wife, who is wandering
in her head, has just sent me a man in a gown--to me! the admirer of
Beranger, the friend of Lisette, the son of