of peace.

"If Mademoiselle Jeanne, in addition to all her other perfections, brings
you fortune, Fabien, if your future is assured--"

"My dear Monsieur Mouillard," broke in the Academician with ill-concealed
satisfaction. "My colleagues call me rich. They slander me. Works on
numismatics do not make a man rich. Monsieur Fabien, who made some
investigations into the subject, can prove it to you. No; I possess no
more than an honorable competence, which does not give me everything, but
lets me lack nothing."

"Aurea mediocritas," exclaimed my uncle, delighted with his quotation.
"Oh, that Horace! What a fellow he was!"

"He was indeed. Well, as I was saying, our daily bread is assured; but
that's no reason why my son-in-law should vegetate in idleness which I do
not consider my due, even at my age."

"Quite right."

"So he must work."

"But what is he to work at?"

"There are other professions besides the law, Monsieur Mouillard. I have
studied Fabien. His temperament is somewhat wayward. With special
training he might have become an artist. Lacking that early moulding into
shape, he never will be anything more than a dreamer."

"I should not have expressed it so well, but I have often thought the
same."

"With a temperament like your nephew's," continued M. Charnot, "the best
he can do is to enter upon a career in which the ideal has some part; not
a predominant, but a sufficient part, something between prose and
poetry."

"Let him be a notary, then."

"No, that's wholly prose; he shall be a librarian."

"A librarian?"

"Yes, Monsieur Mouillard; there are a few little libraries in Paris,
which are as quiet as groves, and in which places are to be got that are
as snug as nests. I have some influence in official circles, and that can
do no harm, you know."

"Quite so."

"We will put our Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be
protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against
revolutions by the little he will be. It's a charming profession; the
very smell of books is improving; merely by breathing it you live an
intellectual life."

"An intellectual life!" exclaimed my uncle with enthusiasm. "Yes, an
intellectual life!"

"And cataloguing books, Monsieur Mouillard, looking through them,
preserving them as far as possible from worms and readers. Don't you
think that's an enviable lot?"

"Yes, more so than mine has been, or my successor's will be."

"By the way, uncle, you