breath. Hold your tongue as much as possible at least, and observe

my conduct narrowly; it will serve you for a model.'
Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor's

behaviour. She observed that he embraced the boy three times in
the course of the evening, and managed generally to confound and

abash the little fellow out of speech and appetite. But she had
the true womanly heroism in little affairs. Not only did she

refrain from the cheap revenge of exposing the Doctor's errors to
himself, but she did her best to remove their ill-effect on Jean-

Marie. When Desprez went out for his last breath of air before
retiring for the night, she came over to the boy's side and took

his hand.
'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners,'

she said. 'He is the kindest of men, but so clever that he is
sometimes difficult to understand. You will soon grow used to him,

and then you will love him, for that nobody can help. As for me,
you may be sure, I shall try to make you happy, and will not bother

you at all. I think we should be excellent friends, you and I. I
am not clever, but I am very good-natured. Will you give me a

kiss?'
He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to

cry. The woman had spoken in complaisance; but she had warmed to
her own words, and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering,

found them enlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he
was just beginning, in an awful voice, 'Anastasie - ,' when she

looked up at him, smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his
peace, wondering, while she led the boy to his attic.

CHAPTER IV.
THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.

THE installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily
effected, and the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the

Doctor's house. Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the
morning; sometimes helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad

with the Doctor, to drink wisdom from the fountain-head; and was
introduced at night to the sciences and the dead tongues. He

retained his singular placidity of mind and manner; he was rarely
in fault; but he made only a very partial progress in his studies,

and remained much of a stranger in the family.
The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All forenoon he worked on

his great book, the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical
Dictionary of all Medicines,' which as yet consisted principally of

slips of paper and pins. When finished, it was to fill many
personable volumes, and to combine antiquarian interest with

professional utility. But the Doctor was studious of literary
graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a touch of manners, a

moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to be preferred
before a piece of science; a little more, and he would have written

the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia' in verse! The article 'Mummia,'
for instance, was already complete, though the remainder of the

work had not progressed beyond the letter A. It was exceedingly
copious and entertaining, written with quaintness and colour,

exact, erudite, a literary article; but it would hardly have
afforded guidance to a practising physician of to-day. The

feminine good sense of his wife had led her to point this out with
uncompromising sincerity; for the Dictionary was duly read aloud to

her, betwixt sleep and waning, as it proceeded towards an
infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor was a little sore on

the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusion with
asperity.

After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked,
sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie; for madame

would have preferred any hardship rather than walk.
She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied

about material comforts, and ready to drop asleep over a novel the
instant she was disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as

she never snored or grew distempered in complexion when she slept.
On the contrary, she looked the very picture of luxurious and

appetising ease, and woke without a start to the perfect possession
of her faculties. I am afraid she was greatly an animal, but she

was a very nice animal to have about. In this way, she had little
to do with Jean-Marie; but the sympathy which had been established

between them on the first night remained unbroken; they held
occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to the

extreme disappointment of the Doctor, they occasionally sallied off
together to that temple of debasing superstition, the village

church; madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a
month to Fontainebleau and returned laden with purchases; and in

short, although the Doctor still continued to regard them as
irreconcilably anti-pathetic, their relation was as intimate,

friendly, and confidential as their natures suffered.
I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly

despised and pitied the boy. She had no admiration for his class
of virtues; she liked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of

boy, cap in hand, light of foot, meeting the eye; she liked
volubility, charm, a little vice - the promise of a second Doctor

Desprez. And it was her indefeasible belief that Jean-Marie was
dull. 'Poor dear boy,' she had said once, 'how sad it is that he

should be so stupid!' She had never repeated that remark, for the
Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal bluntness

of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated with
an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table

china by the fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered silently
to her opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but

not unhappy, over his unfinished tasks, she would snatch her
opportunity in the Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms

about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy
with his distress. 'Do not mind,' she would say; 'I, too, am not

at all clever, and I can assure you that it makes no difference in
life.'

The Doctor's view was naturally different. That gentleman never
wearied of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth,

agreeable enough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so
cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on

his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not
educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the

most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor
mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State?

Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness.
Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his

endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so
agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, when

challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort
of flower upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a

fish, and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.
Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with

the ill-success of his more formal education. A boy, chosen by so
acute an observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of

learning by so philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature
of the universe, to make a more obvious and lasting advance. Now

Jean-Marie was slow in all things, impenetrable in others; and his
power of forgetting was fully on a level with his power to learn.

Therefore the Doctor cherished his peripatetic lectures, to which
the boy attended, which he generally appeared to enjoy, and by

which he often profited.
Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and

moderation proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations. To
these he lovingly returned.

'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase - to avoid excess.

Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance

her provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the
law. Yes, boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and

for our neighbours - lex armata - armed, emphatic, tyrannous law.
If you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box!

The judge, though in a way an admission of disease, is less
offensive to me than either the doctor or the priest. Above all