without evincing any marked feebleness. He himself
quickly paid the driver, well-pleased, too, at finding that nobody, not
even a neighbour, was about. And having opened the door with his latch
key, he helped the injured man to ascend the steps.

A little night lamp glimmered faintly in the vestibule. On hearing the
door open, Pierre's servant, Sophie, had at once emerged from the
kitchen. A short, thin, dark woman of sixty, she had formed part of the
household for more than thirty years, having served the mother before
serving the son. She knew Guillaume, having seen him when he was a young
man, and doubtless she now recognised him, although well-nigh ten years
had gone by since he had last crossed that threshold. Instead of evincing
any surprise, she seemed to consider his extraordinary return quite
natural, and remained as silent and discreet as usual. She led, indeed,
the life of a recluse, never speaking unless her work absolutely required
it. And thus she now contented herself with saying: "Monsieur l'Abbe,
Monsieur Bertheroy is in the study, and has been waiting there for a
quarter of an hour."

At this Guillaume intervened, as if the news revived him: "Does Bertheroy
still come here, then? I'll see him willingly. His is one of the best,
the broadest, minds of these days. He has still remained my master."

A former friend of their father,--the illustrious chemist, Michel
Froment,--Bertheroy had now, in his turn, become one of the loftiest
glories of France, one to whom chemistry owed much of the extraordinary
progress that has made it the mother-science, by which the very face of
the earth is being changed. A member of the Institute, laden with offices
and honours, he had retained much affection for Pierre, and occasionally
visited him in this wise before dinner, by way of relaxation, he would
say.

"You showed him into the study? All right, then, we will go there," said
the Abbe to the servant. "Light a lamp and take it into my room, and get
my bed ready so that my brother may go to bed at once."

While Sophie, without a word or sign of surprise, was obeying these
instructions, the brothers went into their father's former laboratory, of
which the priest had now made a spacious study. And it was with a cry of
joyous astonishment that the _savant_ greeted them on seeing them enter
the room side by side, the one supporting the other. "What, together!" he
exclaimed. "Ah! my dear children, you could not have cau