But M. des Graves, quite innocent, sat down and felt for _La Vie Dévote_, only to find that it was not in the pocket of his cassock. “I have not got it,” he said, acknowledging by the pronoun the identity of the volume. “Is there nothing here?” He looked round, and seeing a little pile of books by the candlesticks took one up. “Oh, you won’t like any of those,” interposed Louis quickly. “They are all Crébillon, and so forth. If you look in the bookcase——” But he stopped, for the priest had with great deliberation put on his spectacles (concerning which Louis had always held the theory that they were unnecessary), and now opened one of the deprecated works. “My dear Louis,” he said, looking at him over the top of his glasses, “do you imagine that I meant to read sermons to you? I am an old man; if you can read . . . Voltaire, I see this is . . . I suppose I may. I shall begin from this marker. Now shut your eyes and try to fancy—if you can—that you are in church and listening to a homily. That ought to be efficacious.” The Vicomte’s mouth twitched again, but he closed his eyes obediently, and as a kind fortune had placed the marker in the opening pages of _La Princesse de Babylone_, the reader’s feelings went unlacerated, and his hearer’s attention wandered off into slumber about what time the fair Formosante was beginning her lengthy conversation with the phœnix. But long after his regular breathing showed that Louis had fallen asleep, the priest sat and looked at him. If only he could have helped him! The deepest and tenderest pity filled him for that careless nature, so wilful and so engaging. And what crisis had faced him now that he should have attempted to speak of it? Could it have any connection with Gilbert and his inexplicable constraint? They would neither of them tell him, because they were neither of them dependent on him, as he might have made them had he been himself less strong. But there had been times when the consciousness of that abstention, far from being sustaining, was beyond words bitter to him, and even to-night it had power to pierce him with a tiny pang. Things might have been so different. . . .