inconciliably at ten o'clock precisely. The menus are drawn up for the

whole year round, day after day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing
to wish for. He has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has

the earliest mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed
every morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next place, he

dresses himself at the same hour, in the same clothes, the same linen,
that I always put on the same chair, you understand? I have to see

that he always has the same cloth; and if it should happen that his
coat came to grief (a mere supposition), I should have to replace it

by another without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go
in and say to my master:

" 'You ought to go out, sir.'
"He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go out, he

doesn't wait for his horses; they are always ready harnessed; the
coachman stops there inconciliably, whip in hand, just as you see him

out there. In the evening, after dinner, my master goes one day to the
Opera, the other to the Ital----no, he hasn't yet gone to the

Italiens, though, for I could not find a box for him until yesterday.
Then he comes in at eleven o'clock precisely, to go to bed. At any

time in the day when he has nothing to do, he reads--he is always
reading, you see--it is a notion he has. My instructions are to read

the Journal de la Librairie before he sees it, and to buy new books,
so that he finds them on his chimney-piece on the very day that they

are published. I have orders to go into his room every hour or so, to
look after the fire and everything else, and to see that he wants

nothing. He gave me a little book, sir, to learn off by heart, with
all my duties written in it--a regular catechism! In summer I have to

keep a cool and even temperature with blocks of ice and at all seasons
to put fresh flowers all about. He is rich! He has a thousand francs

to spend every day; he can indulge his fancies! And he hadn't even
necessaries for so long, poor child! He doesn't annoy anybody; he is

as good as gold; he never opens his mouth, for instance; the house and
garden are absolutely silent. In short, my master has not a single

wish left; everything comes in the twinkling of an eye, if he raises
his hand, and INSTANTER. Quite right, too. If servants are not looked

after, everything falls into confusion. You would never believe the
lengths he goes about things. His rooms are all--what do you call

it?--er--er--en suite. Very well; just suppose, now, that he opens his
room door or the door of his study; presto! all the other doors fly

open of themselves by a patentcontrivance; and then he can go from
one end of the house to the other and not find a single door shut;

which is all very nice and pleasant and convenient for us great folk!
But, on my word, it cost us a lot of money! And, after all, M.

Porriquet, he said to me at last:
" 'Jonathan, you will look after me as if I were a baby in long

clothes,' Yes, sir, 'long clothes!' those were his very words. 'You
will think of all my requirements for me.' I am the master, so to

speak, and he is the servant, you understand? The reason of it? Ah, my
word, that is just what nobody on earth knows but himself and God

Almighty. It is quite inconciliable!"
"He is writing a poem!" exclaimed the old professor.

"You think he is writing a poem, sir? It's a very absorbing affair,
then! But, you know, I don't think he is. He wants to vergetate. Only

yesterday he was looking at a tulip while he was dressing, and he said
to me:

" 'There is my own life--I am vergetating, my poor Jonathan.' Now,
some of them insist that that is monomania. It is inconciliable!"

"All this makes it very clear to me, Jonathan," the professor
answered, with a magisterial solemnity that greatly impressed the old

servant, "that your master is absorbed in a great work. He is deep in
vast meditations, and has no wish to be distracted by the petty

preoccupations of ordinary life. A man of genius forgets everything
among his intellectual labors. One day the famous Newton----"

"Newton?--oh, ah! I don't know the name," said Jonathan.
"Newton, a great geometrician," Porriquet went on, "once sat for

twenty-four hours leaning his elbow on the table; when he emerged from
his musings, he was a day out in his reckoning, just as if he had been

sleeping. I will go to see him, dear lad; I may perhaps be of some use
to him."

"Not for a moment!" Jonathan cried. "Not though you were King of
France--I mean the real old one. You could not go in unless you forced

the doors open and walked over my body. But I will go and tell him you
are here, M. Porriquet, and I will put it to him like this, 'Ought he

to come up?' And he will say Yes or No. I never say, 'Do you wish?' or
'Will you?' or 'Do you want?' Those words are scratched out of the

dictionary. He let out at me once with a 'Do you want to kill me?' he
was so very angry."

Jonathan left the old schoolmaster in the vestibule, signing to him to
come no further, and soon returned with a favorable answer. He led the

old gentleman through one magnificent room after another, where every
door stood open. At last Porriquet beheld his pupil at some distance

seated beside the fire.
Raphael was reading the paper. He sat in an armchair wrapped in a

dressing-gown with some large pattern on it. The intense melancholy
that preyed upon him could be discerned in his languidposture and

feeble frame; it was depicted on his brow and white face; he looked
like some plant bleached by darkness. There was a kind of effeminate

grace about him; the fancies peculiar to wealthy" target="_blank" title="a.富有的；丰富的">wealthy invalids were also
noticeable. His hands were soft and white, like a pretty woman's; he

wore his fair hair, now grown scanty, curled about his temples with a
refinement of vanity.

The Greek cap that he wore was pulled to one side by the weight of its
tassel; too heavy for the light material of which it was made. He had

let the paper-knife fall at his feet, a malachite blade with gold
mounting, which he had used to cut the leaves of the book. The amber

mouthpiece of a magnificent Indian hookah lay on his knee; the
enameled coils lay like a serpent in the room, but he had forgotten to

draw out its fresh perfume. And yet there was a complete contradiction
between the general feebleness of his young frame and the blue eyes,

where all his vitality seemed to dwell; an extraordinaryintelligence
seemed to look out from them and to grasp everything at once.

That expression was painful to see. Some would have read despair in
it, and others some inner conflict terrible as remorse. It was the

inscrutable glance of helplessness that must perforce consign its
desires to the depths of its own heart; or of a miser enjoying in

imagination all the pleasures that his money could procure for him,
while he declines to lessen his hoard; the look of a bound Prometheus,

of the fallen Napoleon of 1815, when he learned at the Elysee the
strategical blunder that his enemies had made, and asked for twenty-

four hours of command in vain; or rather it was the same look that
Raphael had turned upon the Seine, or upon his last piece of gold at

the gaming-table only a few months ago.
He was submitting his intelligence and his will to the homely common-

sense of an old peasant whom fifty years of domestic service had
scarcely civilized. He had given up all the rights of life in order to

live; he had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a
wish; and almost rejoiced at thus becoming a sort of automaton. The

better to struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had
followed Origen's example, and had maimed and chastened his

imagination.
The day after he had seen the diminution of the Magic Skin, at his

sudden accession of wealth, he happened to be at his notary's house. A
well-known physician had told them quite seriously, at dessert, how a

Swiss attacked by consumption had cured himself. The man had never
spoken a word for ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six

breaths only, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,
adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet. "I will

be like that man," thought Raphael to himself. He wanted life at any
price, and so he led the life of a machine in the midst of all the

luxury around him.
The old professor confronted this youthfulcorpse and shuddered; there

seemed something unnatural about the meagre, enfeebled frame. In the
Marquis, with his eager eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly

recognize the fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs, whom
he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and general