If my mystical preoccupations had made me forget my duty for an instant, he was not long in recalling it to me. ‘I apprised you of it,’ he answered. I understood, and brought back the fifty francs to the tradesman, not caring to benefit by a mistake. At that time my daughter’s musical knowledge was limited to the ‘_Bon Roi Dagobert_,’ and yet, when she sat down to the piano, her fingers, yielding to some mysterious influence, moved involuntarily over the piano, and played unknown airs whose accompaniments were in accordance with all the rules of harmony. Convinced that the child was playing from memory, the pianoforte-tuner complimented her upon her musical dispositions. This phenomenon was only produced three or four times; it is true, I always took care to take the child away from the piano as soon as I suspected the approach of the influence. The stock transaction accomplished, other business, patronised and advised by the protector, succeeded as well as the first. The object was always charity. These operations were not important; but for all that, their results increased the importance of the help every day. The spirit had reserved to himself the right of designating the persons he wished to help. Sometimes he indicated the name, but more often he confined himself to mentioning the street, the number, and flat. I remember one Sunday, while breakfasting, I was suddenly told to go _immediately_ and visit a family living in a tiny house behind the Rue François-de-Sourdis. It was a long way off, and notwithstanding the indications given me, I went up and down several streets in that quarter of the town in vain, and I returned without having been able to fulfil my mission. ‘You must go back again,’ said the unknown, ‘and before breakfasting; for you yourself can wait; but it is not the same there, where the children are hungry...!’ Every morning, when leaving home to go to my office, I was commissioned to do a good work. ‘In such and such a street, at such and such a number and flat, at the door to the right, etc., lives a widow; you will give her five francs, or ten francs, and so forth....’ In the beginning, fearing to be led astray, these missions made me feel rather uncomfortable, especially when he sent me to places where there was no apparent misery; but he never made a mistake. To provide for these distributions, and carry out certain religious projects, which he acknowledged to me—such, for example, as the erection of a chapel on the ground of ‘Malbec,’ in order to perpetuate the memory of his visit—to provide, I say, for so much expense, he considerably increased the figure of his operations. It is true that an affair undertaken by his order always the same evening gave good results. And it was necessary it should be rigorously so, if he wished to maintain the blind confidence he seemed so desirous of preserving.