The Marquis Tudesco took to his heels with great agility. The same evening the new Assistant was summoned to the Director's presence and received his dismissal. "Unhappy boy! unhappy boy!" said the Abbé Bordier, beating his brow; "you have been the cause of an intolerable scandal, of a sort unheard of in this house, and that just when I had so much to do." And as he spoke, the scattered papers fluttered like white birds on the Director's table. Making his way through the parlour, Jean saw the _Mater dolorosa_ as before, and read again the names of Philippe-Guy Thiererche and the Countess Valentine. "I hate them," he muttered through clenched teeth, "I hate them all." Meantime, the good priest felt a stir of pity. Every day they had badgered him with reports against Jean Servien. This time he had given way; he had sacrificed the young usher; but he really could make nothing of this tale about a beggar. He changed his mind, ran to the door and called to the young man to corne back. Jean turned and faced him: "No!" he cried, "no! I can bear the life no longer; I am unhappy, I am full of misery--and hate." "Poor lad!" sight the Director, letting his arms drop by his side. That evening he did not write a single line of his Tragedy. XXVII The kind-hearted bookbinder harassed his son with no reproaches. After dinner he went and sat at his shop-door, and looked at the first star that peeped out in the evening sky. "My boy," said he, "I am not a man of learning like you; but I have a notion--and you must not rob me of it, because it is a comfort to me--that, when I have finished binding books, I shall go to that star. The idea occurred to me from what I have read in the paper that the stars are all worlds. What is that star called?" "Venus, father." "In my part of the world, they say it is the shepherd's star. It's a beautiful star, and I think your mother is there. That is why I should like to go there." The old man passed his knotted fingers across his brow, murmuring: "God forgive me, how one forgets those who are gone!" Jean sought balm for his wounded spirit in reading poetry and in long, dreamy walks. His head was filled with visions--a welter of sublime imaginings, in which floated such figures as Ophelia and Cassandra, Gretchen, Delia, Phædra, Manon Lescaut, and Virginia, and hovering amid these, shadows still nameless, still almost formless, and yet full of seduction! Holding bowls and daggers and trailing long veils, they came and went, faded and grew vivid with colour. And Jean could hear them calling to him; "If ever we win to life, it will be through you. And what a bliss it will be for you, Jean Servien, to have created us. How you will love us!" And Jean Servien would answer them; "Come back, come back, or rather do not leave me. But I cannot tell how to make you visible; you vanish away when I gaze at you, and I cannot net you in the meshes of beautiful verse!"