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CHAPTER III.

THE ADOPTION.

treuse for madame, for the doctor de-
spised and distrusted such decoctions;
and then Aline left the wedded pair to
the pleasures of memory and digestion.
"It is a very fortunate circumstance,
my cherished one," observed the doctor
"this coffee is adorable ·
-a very for-
tunate circumstance upon the whole
Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that
poison for to-day; only one day, and you
will feel the benefit, I pledge my reputa-
tion."

"What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?" inquired Anastasie, not heeding his protest, which was of daily recurrence.

MADAME DESPREZ, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie, presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to look upon, a stout brune, with cool, smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort of person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in the worst of conjunctures, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a moment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity of a contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for "That we have no children, my beautiAnastasie was of a very mundane nature, ful," replied the doctor. "I think of it fond of oysters and old wine, and some more and more as the years go on, and what bold pleasantries, and devoted to with more and more gratitude towards the her husband for her own sake rather than Power that dispenses such afflictions. for his. She was imperturbably good- Your health, my darling, my studious natured, but had no idea of self-sacrifice. quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how To live in that pleasant old house, with a they would all have suffered, how they green garden behind and bright flowers would all have been sacrificed! And for about the window, to eat and drink of the what? Children are the last word of hubest, to gossip with a neighbor for a quar-man imperfection. Health flees before ter of an hour, never to wear stays or a their face. They cry, my dear; they put dress except when she went to Fontaine- vexatious questions; they demand to be bleau shopping, to be kept in a continual fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have supply of racy novels, and to be married to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of her nature to the brim. Those who had known the doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired quite as many theories, but of a different order, attributed his present philosophy to the study of Anastasie. It was her brute enjoyment that he rationalized and perhaps vainly imitated.

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the doctor: everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour and burnish. So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf, warmed and cosseted to his heart's content.

their noses blown; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break this piece of sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid offspring, like an infidelity."

"Indeed!" said she; and she laughed. "Now, that is like you to take credit for the thing you could not help."

"My dear," returned the doctor solemnly, "we might have adopted."

"Never!" cried madame. "Never, doctor, with my consent. If the child were my own flesh and blood, I would not say no. But to take another person's indiscretion on my shoulders my dear friend, I have too much sense."

"We

"Precisely," replied the doctor. both had. And I am all the better pleased with our wisdom, because because " he looked at her sharply. "Because what?" she asked, with a faint premonition of danger.

"Because I have found the right person," said the doctor firmly, "and shall adopt him this afternoon."

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. "You have lost your reason," she said; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed to threaten trouble.

The midday meal was excellent. There was a ripe melon, a fish from the river in a memorable Béarnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and a dish of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The doctor drank half a bottle plus one glass, the wife half a bottle minus the same quantity, which was a marital privilege, of an excellent "Not so, my dear," he replied; Côte Rotie, seven years old. Then the tain its complete exercise. To the proof : coffee was brought, and a flask of Char-instead of attempting to cloak my incon

"I re

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sistency, I have, by way of preparing you, pier. But will this? Are you sure, my
thrown it into strong relief. You will husband? Last night, you say, you
there, I think, recognize the philosopher found him! He may be the worst of hum-
who has the ecstasy to call you wife. bugs."
The fact is, I have been reckoning all
this while without an accident. I never
thought to find a son of my own. Now,
last night, I found one. Do not unneces-
sarily alarm yourself, my dear; he is not
a drop of blood to me that I know. It is
his mind, darling, his mind that calls me
father."

"His mind!" she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics. "His mind, indeed! Henri, is this an idiotic pleas antry, or are you mad? His mind! And what of my mind?"

"I think not," replied the doctor. "But do not suppose me so unwary as to adopt him out of hand. I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of the world; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to meet them all. I take the lad as stable boy. If he pilfer, if he grumble, if he desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I shall recognize him for no son of mine, and send him tramping."

"You will never do so when the time comes," said his wife; "I know your good heart."

"Truly," replied the doctor with a shrug, She reached out her hand to him, with "you have your finger on the hitch. He a sigh; the doctor smiled as he took it will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever and carried it to his lips; he had gained beautiful Anastasie. She will never un- his point with greater ease than he had derstand him; he will never understand dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth her. You married the animal side of my time, he had proved the efficacy of his nature, dear; and it is on the spiritual trusty argument, his Excalibur, the hint of side that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie. a return to Paris. Six months in the capSo much so, that, to be perfectly frank, Iital, for a man of the doctor's antecedents stand in some awe of him myself. You and relations, implied no less a calamity will easily perceive that I am announcing a calamity for you. Do not," he broke out in tones of real solicitude, "do not give way to tears after a meal, Anastasie. You will certainly give yourself a false digestion."

Anastasie controlled herself. "Youknow how willing I am to humor you," she said, "in all reasonable matters. But on this point

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My dear love," interrupted the doctor, eager to prevent a refusal, "who wished to leave Paris? Who made me give up cards, and the opera, and the boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was my life before I knew you? Have I been faithful? Have I been obedient? Have I not borne my doom with cheerfulness? In all honesty, Anastasie, have I not a right to a stipulation on my side? I have, and you know it. I stipu late my son."

Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colors instantly. "You will break my heart," she sighed.

"Not in the least," said he. "You will feel a trifling inconvenience for a month, just as I did when I was first brought to this vile hamlet; then your admirable sense and temper will prevail, and I see you already as content as ever, and making your husband the happiest of men."

"You know I can refuse you nothing," she said, with a last flicker of resistance; nothing that will make you truly hap

66

than total ruin. Anastasie had saved the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictly in the country. The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear; and she would have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the back garden, let alone adopting a stable-boy, rather than permit the question of return to be discussed.

About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost; he had never been conscious since his seizure. Doctor Desprez was present at his last passage, and declared the farce over. Then he took Jean-Marie by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where there was a convenient bench beside the river. Here he sat him down and made the boy place himself on his left.

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'Jean-Marie," he said very gravely, "this world is exceedingly vast; and even France, which is only a small corner of it, is a great place for a little lad like you. Unfortunately it is full of eager, shouldering people moving on; and there are very few bakers' shops for so many eaters. Your master is dead; you are not fit to gain a living by yourself; you do not wish to steal? No. Your situation then is undesirable, it is, for the moment, critical. On the other hand, you behold in me a man not old, though elderly; still enjoying the youth of the heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated in this world's affairs; keeping a

good table: a man, neither as friend nor host, to be despised. I offer myself to you as both. I offer you your food and clothes, and to teach you lessons in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the purpose for a lad of your stamp than those of all the priests in Europe. I propose no wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me, the door shall be open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start the world upon. In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which you would very speedily learn to clean and keep in order. Do not hurry yourself to answer, and take it or leave it as you judge aright. Only remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person, but a man who lives rigorously to himself; and that if I make the proposal, it is for my own ends-it is because I perceive clearly an advantage to myself. And now, reflect."

"I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I can do. I thank you, sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful," said the boy.

"Thank you," said the doctor warmly, rising at the same time and wiping his brow, for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind. A refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed him in a ridiculous light before Anastasie. "How hot and heavy is the evening, to be sure! I have always had a fancy to be a fish in summer, Jean-Marie, here in the Loing beside Gretz. I should lie under a water-lily and listen to the bells, which must sound most delicately down below. That would be a life- do you not think so, too?"

"Yes," said Jean-Marie. "Thank God, you have imagination!" cried the doctor, embracing the boy with his usual effusive warmth, though it was a proceeding that seemed to disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an English schoolboy of the same age. "And now," he added, "I will take you to my wife."

Madame Desprez sat in the diningroom in a cool wrapper. All the blinds were down, and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled with water; her eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a novel as they entered. Though she was a bustling woman, she enjoyed repose between whiles and had a remarkable appetite for sleep.

The doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for the benefit of both parties, "You must try to like each other for my sake.”

"He is very pretty," said Anastasie. "Will you kiss me, my pretty little fellow?"

The doctor was furious and dragged her into the passage. "Are you a fool, Anastasie?" he said; "what is all this Í hear about the tact of women? Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my experience. You address my little philosopher as if he were an infant. He must be spoken to with more respect, I tell you; he must not be kissed and Georgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child."

"I only did it to please you, I am sure," replied Anastasie; "but I will try to do better."

The doctor apologized for his warmth. "But I do wish him," he continued, "to feel at home among us. And really your conduct was so idiotic, my cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of place, that a saint might have been pardoned a little vehemence in disapproval. Do, do try-if it is possible for a woman to understand young people - but of course it is not, and I waste my 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 behavior. 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 JeanMarie. 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 eloquence, and tenderness followed. The doctor, entering, found them enlaced; he con

1

cluded 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.

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When the doctor and his wife were in bed, she put her arms about him very caressingly. Henri," she said, "my husband, I love your son; I shall love him more every day; you have done wisely and kindly in bringing him, for he will be a great happiness to me; and to love the same person will help us to love each other the more dearly."

The doctor was so tenderly affected at these words that he lost countenance; a pricking in his eyes admonished him that weakness was prevailing in the citadel of man; nor did he contend with nature; and this ingenuous couple mingled their tears and kissed each other with the utmost affection.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.

ten with quaintness and color, 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 waking, 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 JeanMarie; 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 appetizing 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

THE installation of the adopted stableboy 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 morn-had little to do with Jean-Marie; but the ing; 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.

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 antipathetic, their relation was as intimate, friendly, and confidential as their natures suffered.

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 I fear, however, that in her heart of to fill many personable volumes, and to hearts, madame kindly despised and pitcombine antiquarian interest with profes-ied the boy. She had no admiration for sional utility. But the doctor was studi- his class of virtues; she liked a smart, ous of literary graces and the picturesque; polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap an anecdote, a touch of manners, a moral in hand, light of foot, meeting the eye; qualification, or a sounding epithet was she liked volubility, charm, a little vicesure to be preferred before a piece of the promise of a second Doctor Desprez. science; a little more, and he would have And it was her indefeasible belief that written the 66 Comparative Pharmaco- Jean-Marie was dull. "Poor dear boy," poia" in verse! The article "Mummia "she had said once, "how sad it is that he for instance, was already complete, though should be so stupid!" She had never the remainder of the work had not pro-repeated that remark, for the doctor had gressed beyond the letter A. It was raged like a wild bull, denouncing the exceedingly copious and entertaining, writ- brutal bluntness of her mind, bemoaning VOL. XLII. 2178

LIVING AGE.

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his own fate to be so unequally mated with an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more dearly, 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 antinomics 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

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medicines, are resumed in one phraseto 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 our neighbors 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 the doctor the doctor and the purulent trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air-from the neighborhood of a pinetum for the sake of the turpentineunadulterated wine, and the reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of nature-these, my boy, are the best medical appliances and the best religious comforts. Devote yourself to these. Hark! there are the bells of Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair). How clear and airy is the sound! The nerves are harmonized and quieted; the mind attuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart! Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yet you yourself perceive they are a part of health. Did you remember your quinine this morning? Good. Quinine also is a work of nature; it is, after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for ourselves if we lived in the locality. What a world is this! Though a professed atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround our path! The river runs by the garden end, our bath, our fishpond, our natural system of drainage. There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling water from the earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with a little wine, most wholesome. The district is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is the only prevalent complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it. I tell you and my opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processes of reason - if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasure, it would be the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend to prevent us with a pistol bullet."

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One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village. The river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage. The indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower. A healthy wind blew from

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