ardens, near the Tennis Court, when I sat down, overcome. See what comes
of enthusiasm and going to call on your tutor! Ah, young
three-and-twenty, when will you learn wisdom?

CHAPTER III

AN APOLOGY

9 P.M.

I have made up my mind. I shall go to see M. Charnot. But before that I
shall go to his publisher's and find out something about this famous
man's works, of which I know nothing whatever.

December 31st

He lives in the Rue de l'Universite.

I have called. I have seen him. I owe this to an accident, to the
servant's forgetting her orders.

As I entered, on the stroke of five, he was spinning a spiral twist of
paper beneath the lamplight to amuse his daughter--he a member of the
Institute, she a girl of eighteen. So that is how these big-wigs employ
their leisure moments!

The library where I found them was full of book cases-open bookcases,
bookcases with glass doors, tall bookcases, dwarf bookcases, bookcases
standing on legs, bookcases standing on the floor--of statuettes yellow
with smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and
inkstands of "artistic" pat terns. He was seated at the table, with his
back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger and
thumb--the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly. Across
the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on her hands
and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing's sake, to give
play to her young spirits and gladden her old father's heart as he gazed
on her, delighted.

I must confess it made a pretty picture; and M. Charnot at that moment
was extremely unlike the M. Charnot who had confronted me from behind the
desk.

I was not left long to contemplate.

The moment I lifted the 'portiere' the girl jumped up briskly and
regarded me with a touch of haughtiness, meant, I think, to hide a slight
confusion. To compare small things with great, Diana must have worn
something of that look at sight of Actaeon. M. Charnot did not rise, but
hearing somebody enter, turned half-round in his armchair, while his
eyes, still dazzled with the lamplight, sought the intruder in the
partial shadow of the room.

I felt myself doubly uneasy in the presence of this reader of the Early
Text and of this laughing girl.

"Sir," I began, "I owe you an apology--"

He recognized me. The girl moved a step.

"Stay, Jeanne, stay. We shal