Claude Larcher was not ignorant of any of these facts, which had all been of importance in developing the character and talent of the young poet. Whilst Françoise was hanging up his overcoat his rapid glance travelled round the dimly-lighted passage and took in all those material details which for him had a deeper and a moral signification. He knew why, in the corner near the door, side by side with the professor's stout alpaca umbrella with its clumsy handle, there stood a neat English frame with an elegant stick, chosen by Madame Fresneau for her brother. He knew, too, that it was the sister's love that had provided the dainty Malacca that adorned the hall-stand, and which had probably cost thirty times as much as the plain heavy stick carried by Fresneau when it was fine. He knew that the professor's books, after having for a long time been exposed to the dirt and dust on the blackened shelves of a bookcase in this passage, had at length been banished even from that place to a dark cupboard, and that the passage had then been given up to René's decorative fancies. The walls were adorned with engravings of his choosing--a whole row of Raffet's splendid studies of the great Napoleon, which must have been very obnoxious to the Republican tastes of the professor. But Claude knew well enough that Fresneau would be the very last to notice the constant sacrifice of the whole household to this brother, whom he, too, worshipped, out of love for Emilie, as blindly as did the servant and even the uncle--the uncle, for the Abbé Taconet had not been able to resist the influence of the young man's disposition and talent. The Abbé did not forget that his nephew possessed a modest income--the amount invested, by his advice, in Italians, and afterwards transferred to safe French stocks, now bringing in three thousand francs--and that he himself would double it at his death. Was not René's Christian education a guarantee that his literary talents would help to propagate the views of the Church? The priest had therefore done what he could to start the poet on that difficult path of letters where the fortunate youth had so far only met with happiness.