l
suddenly remind you of another nook that may be thousands of miles away.
One morning, behind the Quai Voltaire, an old yellow house with rusty
balconies made me almost homesick for New Orleans."

"The Quai Voltaire!" said the padre.

"I heard Rachel in 'Valerie' that night," the young man went on.
"Did you know that she could sing too? She sang several verses by an
astonishing little Jew musician that has come up over there."

The padre gazed down at his blithe guest. "To see somebody, somebody,
once again," he said, "is very pleasant to a hermit."

"It cannot be more pleasant than arriving at an oasis," returned Gaston.

They had delayed on the threshold to look at the beauty of the evening,
and now the priest watched his parishioners come and go. "How can one
make companions--" he began; then, checking himself, he said: "Their
souls are as sacred and immortal as mine, and God helps me to help
them. But in this world it is not immortal souls that we choose for
companions; it is kindred tastes, intelligences, and--and so I and my
books are growing old together, you see," he added, more lightly. "You
will find my volumes as behind the times as myself."

He had fallen into talk more intimate than he wished; and while the
guest was uttering something polite about the nobility of missionary
work, he placed him in an easy-chair and sought aguardiente for his
immediate refreshment. Since the year's beginning there had been no
guest for him to bring into his rooms, or to sit beside him in the high
seats at table, set apart for the gente fina.

Such another library was not then in California; and though Gaston
Villere, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles
forever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he
knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those
of Shakespeare, Dante, Moliere, and Cervantes. These were here also; nor
could it be precisely said of them, either, that they made a part of the
young man's daily reading. As he surveyed the padre's august shelves,
it was with a touch of the florid Southern gravity which his Northern
education had not wholly schooled out of him that he said:

"I fear that I am no scholar, sir. But I know what writers every
gentleman ought to respect."

The subtle padre bowed gravely to this compliment.

It was when his eyes caught sight of the music that the young man felt
again at ease, and his vivacity returned to