"Food is also necessary," answered the count, "and does man find it ready for him, unless he works? No, no, my friend; labor and prayer, such is the destiny of man upon the earth. His material life is bought by the sweat of his brow, as his spiritual life is the price of his efforts. 'Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,' has said the divine Master. Ah! if you had ever knelt before that God whom you blaspheme; if you had with perseverance exposed to him your doubts, your miseries, you would have known that he never leaves without help the soul that sincerely implores him; you would have known that he never hides himself from him who seeks him with a humble and contrite spirit and a pure heart. Pray, my dear Frederick, pray, I tell you, and you will feel that he is near to you; that his arms are open to receive you, and his hands ready to shed on you all the sweet consolations and hopes with which they are filled!" It was now late; the two friends then separated, and, without doubt, the count that night in his prayers demanded with more than usual fervor the conversion of the man he so warmly loved. Ordinarily, on gaining his room, the baron was accustomed to install himself as comfortably as possible in an immense old leathern arm-chair, whose age dated back for two or three centuries, which he placed in front of the wood fire that burnt noisily on the hearth; and after having again lit his pipe, that inseparable friend, he used to take a book, and, stretching out his feet upon the copper fire-dogs, wait until he felt sleepy, which invariably occurred as soon as there remained no more tobacco in the sculptured wooden bowl of his pipe. {85}