and teaching them to
dance. He had a happy knack, by way of trying them afterwards, of making
them each execute three or four steps of a gavotte, and when they
rewarded his pains, a smile would flicker on his stern lips.

One time when he was pulling the string of a Scaramouch to a dance tune:

"Sir," he observed, "this little travesty reminds me of a quaint story.
It was in 1746, when I was completing my noviciate under the care of the
Pere Magitot, a man well on in years, of deep learning and austere
morals. At that period, you perhaps remember, dancing figures, intended
in the first instance to amuse children, exercised over women and even
over men, both young and old, an extraordinary fascination; they were
all the rage in Paris. The fashionable shops were crammed with them;
they were to be found in the houses of people of quality, and it was
nothing out of the way to see a grave and reverend senior dancing his
doll in the streets and public gardens. The Pere Magitot's age,
character, and sacred profession did not avail to guard him against
infection. Every time he saw anyone busy jumping his cardboard mannikin,
his fingers itched with impatience to be at the same game,--an
impatience that soon grew well nigh intolerable. One day when he was
paying a visit of importance on a matter involving the interests of the
whole Order to Monsieur Chauvel, advocate in the courts of the
Parlement, noticing one of these dancers hanging from the chimney-piece,
he felt a terrible temptation to pull its string, which he only resisted
at the cost of a tremendous effort. But this frivolous ambition pursued
him everywhere and left him no peace. In his studies, in his
meditations, in his prayers, at church, at chapter, in the confessional
and in the pulpit, he was possessed by it. After some days of dreadful
agony of mind, he laid bare his extraordinary case to the General of the
Order, who happened fortunately to be in Paris at the moment. He was an
eminent ecclesiastic of Milan, a Doctor and Prince of the Church. His
counsel to the Pere Magitot was to satisfy a craving, innocent in its
inception, importunate in its consequences and inordinate in its excess,
which threatened to super induce the gravest disorders in the soul which
was afflicted with it. On the advice, or more strictly by the order of
the General, the Pere Magitot returned to Monsieur Chauvel's house,
where the advocate received him, as on the first occasion, in his
cab