The pupil of Granarius, Jules Sauval, entered. If you have ever met one of those modest young fellows devoted to science, knowing much, yet possessing a certain simplicity, which, although charming, does not prevent him from being the most ambitious creature in the world, an innocent who would turn the earth upside down about a hyoïde bone, or a univalve shell. If you have seen a youth of this type, then you know Jules Sauval. He was as candid as he was poor—candour goes when fortune comes.—He venerated Professor Granarius as a father, and admired in him the disciple of the great Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Blessed be science, Jules Sauval would have just been the same, even supposing the professor had no pretty daughter Anna. He was a second Jarpeado alive among the dry bones and débris of antiquity. Just as the _Coccus cacti_—the subjects of Jarpeado—had been crushed to lend a glow of life to the finest works of art, so the young student identified himself with defunct organisms in {275} order that science might all the more faithfully picture the forms and colours of pre-historic life. Like Jarpeado, Jules Sauval had his loves, he admired the fair Anna as a perfect type of a highly-organised sensitive animal—so he said. In common with the professor he was intent upon uniting this red prince to some analogous creature. The men of science had come down to the level of the members of the Chamber of Deputies, and talked them into erecting a spacious hothouse to contain the finest plants of the tropics. Within its glass walls the illustrious professor has found a solitary living specimen of the _Coccus cacti_—Cochineal—Jarpeado, whose habits they had studied so profoundly as to discover that the prince was endowed with pride of race, and passion of sentiment, opposed to his union with any partner saving a princess of his own vermilion blood. “Alas! Professor,” exclaimed Jules, “I have just left the glass-house, and all is lost! There is no possibility of uniting Jarpeado to any living creature, he refused the _Coccus ficus caricæ_. I had them under our best microscope.” “Ah, you horrid creature!” cried Anna. “This is then a prince of the insect world, and yet his history is interesting. I might have known he was no human being, since you say he will die faithful to his first love.” “Hush, child,” said Granarius, “I fail to note the difference between dying faithful and unfaithful, when it is a question of dying.” “You will never understand me, sir,” said Anna, in a tone which startled the mild professor, “and as for you, Mr. Jules, all your science and all your charms will never tempt the prince to prove unfaithful. You, sir, shall never be capable of love such as his. A little less science and a trifle more common sense would have suggested keeping him among the dust of his defunct ancestors, where, perchance, he left his living partner, or will find another of red-royal blood.”