"Oh, mademoiselle!" cried the tutor, stepping forward, terrified, "please do not insist!" And then in order to explain his own agitation, he added: "They are wretched verses; please let me put them out of sight. I will show you some others which are more worth looking at." Bijou's hand was still held out, and she stood there waiting, looking very frank and innocent. "Oh, please, Jean, let me see these all the same; that need not prevent M. Giraud writing some more that we can see, too." "I cannot show you a letter," replied Jean, handing the paper to the distracted tutor, "and this is a kind of letter, and belongs to the person who wrote it." "Thank you," stammered out Giraud, thoroughly abashed, "I am much obliged, monsieur." And he at once put the troublesome scrap of paper into his pocket out of sight. "Pierrot!" called out the marchioness, "give me 'La Bruyere'--you know where it is?" "What's that?" asked the youth, winking. "'La Bruyere'?" "You see," remarked M. de Jonzac, looking at his son with an expression of despair on his face, "he does not even know who 'La Bruyere' is!" Pierrot protested energetically. "Yes, I do know who he is, and the proof is, I can tell you--it's a blue-back." "A what?" asked the marchioness. "A blue-back, aunt." "Explain to your aunt," interposed M. Giraud, "that you have a most objectionable mania for speaking of books by the colour of the binding rather than by their title." "By George!" exclaimed M. de Jonzac, annoyed, "he never by any chance opens one. He is an absolute ignoramus; just to think that he will soon be seventeen!" "Poor Pierrot," said Bijou compassionately, "he is not as ignorant as all that!" And then, as her uncle did not answer, she added: "And then, too, he is ever so nice, and he is so strong and well." "Oh, as to that," said M. de Jonzac, "his health is perfect, and that just makes him all the more insufferable, but not any more intelligent though. Everyone complains about the overtaxing of the intellectual faculties; they say that it is the ruin of children; and so, by way of improvement, they go in now for overtaxing them physically, which is a more certain ruin still." "Ah, uncle is waging war now," put in Bertrade; "but I am of his opinion, too, for I do not like to think that some day my children will add to the number of the young ruffians we see around us." "But," objected Henry de Bracieux, "many of them--and some quite young, too--are very intellectual; I know some." "I, too, know some," said Jean de Blaye; "but, to my way of thinking, they are not precisely intellectual, they are--" Just at this moment a bell was rung in the hall. "We must go to luncheon, children," said the marchioness, rising, "Jean will finish his little definition for us at table." "Oh, I am not particularly keen about it, aunt," said Jean, laughing.