But what, in heaven’s name, induced this man to a mutinous attitude towards a social system of which, by reason of his position, he need take nothing but profit? His opportunities of selfish gratification would not be multiplied by the sacrifice of caste and fortune. He was not, Ned felt convinced, a reformer by conviction. Unless the itch for cheap notoriety was the tap-root of his character, what was to account for this astonishing paradox? What, indeed? Yet a motiveless losel is no uncommon sight. To be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth is to be endowed with what it is obviously difficult to retain. It is to be awarded the prize before the race is run, and that is no encouragement to sound morality or healthy effort. Easily acquired is soon dissipated. What wonder, then, if Fortunatus, shedding wealth as naturally as he sheds his milk-teeth, looks to Nature for a renewal of all in kind. “Well,” said St Denys, “you are going to Paris. It is the beacon-light about which the storm birds circle. If you seek experience, you will there gain it; if novelty--_mon Dieu_!--you will have the opportunity to see some strange puppets dance by-and-by.” “And doubtless those who would hold the strings are in the clouds.” “Not so, monsieur. These marionettes--they will move on a different principle, by trackers, like an organ. It may even be possible to make one or two skip, touching a note here in this quiet corner of Liége. But I do not know. When the time comes for the performance, this puppet-man himself may be in Paris.” “You allude to M. de St Denys?” “Do I? But, after all, he is very small beer.” Nicette sang like a bee in a flower. Her cot was the veritable summer-house to a garden-village--luxuriously cool as an evening-primrose blossom with a ladybird and a crystal of dew in the heart of it. She was always self-contained, always tranquil, always fragrant. Her reputation, like that of some other saints, was founded, perhaps, upon her constitutional insensibility to small irritations. Cause and effect in her were temperament and digestion--read either way--influencing one another serenely. That sensitiveness of the moral cuticle that, with the most of us, finds intentional aggravations in habits and opinions that are not ours, she would appear to be innocent of. She never complained of nail-points in her shoes or crumbs in her bed; and that was to be bird of rare enough feather to merit distinction. Indifference to pain is considered none the less worshipful because it proceeds from insusceptibility to it: the name of sanctity may attach itself to the most self-enjoying impassibility. The moral is objective; for how many dyspeptics--sufferers--are there, turning an habitual brave face to their colourless world, who would be other than damned incontinent by a whole posse of devil’s-advocates were a claim advanced to dub them so much as Blessed?