"What’s the matter with everybody!" Agnes cried, looking from one to another. "You people talk in riddles to me. I’m not used to it. And, Florence, you are getting to be so sober I don’t know what to do with you. You and the Judge are just alike. What’s the matter with everybody? Mr. Howard mumbles about the house and Mr. Bodney acts like a man with—with the jerks, whatever that is, for I don’t know. There, I’m glad breakfast is ready. Come on, Mr. Judge." *CHAPTER X.* *WILLIAM AGREED WITH THE JUDGE.* The Judge took his accustomed seat at the head of the breakfast table, Howard on his right and Bodney’s vacant chair at his left; but there was no disposition on the part of the worry-haunted father to enter into conversation with the son. Howard was talkative; his mind might have been termed dyspeptic instead of digestive. The books, stories, sketches, scraps that he read, ill-stored, appeared as a patchwork in his talk. He spoke of a French author, and Florence saw the Judge wince. She was sitting beside Howard, and she pulled at his coat sleeve as a warning to drop the disagreeable name. He understood and changed the subject, but the fire had been kindled. "It is no wonder that the French could not whip the Germans," said the Judge, not addressing himself to Howard, but to the table. "It was the literature of France that weakened her armies. Morality was destroyed, and without morality there can be no enduring courage." "I think Victor Hugo is just lovely," said Agnes. The Judge nodded assent. "A great genius—and, by the way, he said that there were but three men worthy to be estimated as memorable in all the history of this life—Moses, Shakespeare and Homer. He belonged to older and better France, at the dying end of her greatness. And you will observe that he did not include a Frenchman in his list." "But I warrant you," said Howard, "that in his secret mind he put himself at the head of it." The Judge looked at him. "Warrants issued by you, sir, are not always returnable accompanied by the facts." "No, I wouldn’t issue a warrant for the arrest of a fact. Truth ought to be at large." Florence glanced at the Judge and saw him slowly close his eyes and slowly open them. "You think Hugo lovely," said the old man, speaking to Agnes. "But what do you think of Zola?" "I don’t know anything about him. But some of the girls said he was horrid," she answered. "It is a good thing for you that you don’t know anything about him, and it reflects credit upon the judgment of the girls who pronounced him horrid," said the Judge. "His influence upon his own country, and upon this country, too, has been most pernicious."