'Observe the relative position,' returned the Doctor with a smile.
'It is your attitude to believe through thick and thin in one man's

judgment - your own. I follow the same opinion, but critically and
with open eyes. Which is the more irrational? - I leave it to

yourself.'
'O, my dear fellow!' cried Casimir, 'stick to your Turks, stick to

your stable-boy, go to the devil in general in your own way and be
done with it. But don't ratiocinate with me - I cannot bear it.

And so, ta-ta. I might as well have stayed away for any good I've
done. Say good-bye from me to Stasie, and to the sullen hang-dog

of a stable-boy, if you insist on it; I'm off.'
And Casimir departed. The Doctor, that night, dissected his

character before Anastasie. 'One thing, my beautiful,' he said,
'he has learned one thing from his lifelongacquaintance with your

husband: the word RATIOCINATE. It shines in his vocabulary, like a
jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he continually misapplies it.

For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the
sense of to ERGOTISE, implying, as it were - the poor, dear fellow!

- a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to Jean-Marie, it must
be forgiven him - it is not his nature, it is the nature of his

life. A man who deals with money, my dear, is a man lost.'
With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had been somewhat

slow. At first he was inconsolable, insisted on leaving the
family, went from paroxysm to paroxysm of tears; and it was only

after Anastasie had been closeted for an hour with him, alone, that
she came forth, sought out the Doctor, and, with tears in her eyes,

acquainted that gentleman with what had passed.
'At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing,' she said.

'Imagine! if he had left us! what would the treasure be to that?
Horrible treasure, it has brought all this about! At last, after

he has sobbed his very heart out, he agrees to stay on a condition
- we are not to mention this matter, this infamoussuspicion, not

even to mention the robbery. On that agreement only, the poor,
cruel boy will consent to remain among his friends.'

'But this inhibition,' said the Doctor, 'this embargo - it cannot
possibly apply to me?'

'To all of us,' Anastasie assured him.
'My cherished one,' Desprez protested, 'you must have

misunderstood. It cannot apply to me. He would naturally come to
me.'

'Henri,' she said, 'it does; I swear to you it does.'
'This is a painful, a very painful circumstance,' the Doctor said,

looking a little black. 'I cannot affect, Anastasie, to be
anything but justly wounded. I feel this, I feel it, my wife,

acutely.'
'I knew you would,' she said. 'But if you had seen his distress!

We must make allowances, we must sacrifice our feelings.'
'I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices,'

returned the Doctor very stiffly.
'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed? It will

be like your noble nature,' she cried.
So it would, he perceived - it would be like his noble nature! Up

jumped his spirits, triumphant at the thought. 'Go, darling,' he
said nobly, 'reassure him. The subject is buried; more - I make an

effort, I have accustomed my will to these exertions - and it is
forgotten.'

A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortally
sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his

business. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat
down that night to supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He

thus sang the requiem of the treasure:-
'This has been, on the whole, a most amusing episode,' he said.

'We are not a penny the worse - nay, we are immensely gainers. Our
philosophy has been exercised; some of the turtle is still left -

the most wholesome of delicacies; I have my staff, Anastasie has
her new dress, Jean-Marie is the proud possessor of a fashionable

kepi. Besides, we had a glass of Hermitage last night; the glow
still suffuses my memory. I was growing positively niggardly with

that Hermitage, positively niggardly. Let me take the hint: we had
one bottle to celebrate the appearance of our visionary fortune;

let us have a second to console us for its occultation. The third
I herebydedicate to Jean-Marie's wedding breakfast.'

CHAPTER VII. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ.
THE Doctor's house has not yet received the compliment of a

description, and it is now high time that the omission were
supplied, for the house is itself an actor in the story, and one

whose part is nearly at an end. Two stories in height, walls of a
warm yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified with moss

and lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of
the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient.

The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and
patterns; the handrail of the stair was carved in countrified

arabesque; a stout timberpillar, which did duty to support the
dining-room roof, bore mysteriouscharacters on its darker side,

runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over
the legendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell

upon the Scandinavian scholar who had left them. Floors, doors,
and rafters made a great variety of angles; every room had a

particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden,
after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former

proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great
strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had

many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and
nothing but its excellent brightness - the window-glass polished

and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very
prop all wreathed about with climbing flowers - nothing but its air

of a well-tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in the
sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house for comfortable

people to inhabit. In poor or idle management it would soon have
hurried into the blackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole

family loved it, and the Doctor was never better inspired than when
he narrated its imaginary story and drew the character of its

successive masters, from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its
walls after the sack of the town, and past the mysterious engraver

of the runes, down to the long-headed, dirty-handed boor from whom
he had himself acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any alarm

about its security, the idea had never presented itself. What had
stood four centuries might well endure a little longer.

Indeed, in this particular winter, after the finding and losing of
the treasure, the Desprez' had an anxiety of a very different

order, and one which lay nearer their hearts. Jean-Marie was
plainly not himself. He had fits of hectic activity, when he made

unusual exertions to please, spoke more and faster, and redoubled
in attention to his lessons. But these were interrupted by spells

of melancholia and brooding silence, when the boy was little better
than unbearable.

'Silence,' the Doctor moralised - 'you see, Anastasie, what comes
of silence. Had the boy properly unbosomed himself, the little

disappointment about the treasure, the little annoyance about
Casimir's incivility, would long ago have been forgotten. As it

is, they prey upon him like a disease. He loses flesh, his
appetite is variable and, on the whole, impaired. I keep him on

the strictest regimen, I exhibit the most powerful tonics; both in
vain.'

'Don't you think you drug him too much?' asked madame, with an
irrepressible shudder.

'Drug?' cried the Doctor; 'I drug? Anastasie, you are mad!'
Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly declined. The

Doctor blamed the weather, which was cold and boisterous. He
called in his CONFRERE from Bourron, took a fancy for him,

magnified his capacity, and was pretty soon under treatment himself
- it scarcely appeared for what complaint. He and Jean-Marie had

each medicine to take at different periods of the day. The Doctor