This was not precisely the tone which the same culprit had adopted towards Dora Lomax. The Voltairean suddenly felt himself to be making excuses--shabby excuses--in the presence of somebody connected, however distantly, with _l'infame_. He drew himself up with an angry shake of his whole powerful frame. 'Oh, why not?' said Ancrum, with a shrug, 'if life's long enough'--and he absently lifted and let fall a book which lay on the table beside him; it was Newman's 'Dream of Gerontius'--'if life's long enough, and--happy enough! Well, so you've been learning French, I can hear. Teaching yourself?' 'No; there's an old Frenchman, old Barbier--do you know him, sir? He gives lessons at a shilling an hour. Very few people go to him now; they want younger men. And there's lot's of them about. But old Barbier knows more about books than any of them, I'll be bound.' 'Has he introduced you to French novels? I never read any; but they're bad, of course--must be. In all those things I'm a Britisher and believe what the Britishers say.' 'We're just at the end of "Manon Lescaut,"' said David, doggedly. 'And partly with him, partly by myself, I've read a bit of Rousseau--and a good lot of Diderot,--and Voltaire.' David threw an emphasis into the last name, which was meant to atone to himself for the cowardice of a few minutes before. The old boyish feeling towards Mr. Ancrum, which had revived in him when he entered the room, had gradually disappeared again. He bore the minister no real grudge for having forgotten him, but he wished it to be clearly understood that the last fragments of the Christian Brethren yoke had dropped from his neck. 'Ah! don't know anything about them,' said Ancrum, slowly; 'but then, as you know, I'm a very ignorant person. Well, now, was it Voltaire took you to the secularists, or the secularists to Voltaire?' David laughed, but did not give a reply immediately. 'Well, never mind,' said the minister, 'All Christians are fools, of course--that's understood.--Is that all you have been learning these four years?' 'I work at Latin every morning,' said David, very red, and on his dignity. 'I've begun Greek, and I go to the science classes, mathematics and chemistry, at the Mechanics' Institute.' Mr. Ancrum's face softened. 'Why, I'll be bound you have to go to work pretty early, Davy?' 'Seven o'clock, sir, I take the shutters down. But I get an hour and a half first, and three hours in the evening. This winter I've got through the "Aeneid," and Horace's "Epistles" and "Ars Poetica." Do you remember, sir?'--and the lad's voice grew sharp once more, tightening as it were under the pressure of eagerness and ambition from beneath--'do you remember that Scaliger read the "Iliad" in twenty days, and was a finished Greek scholar in two years? Why can't one do that now?' 'Why shouldn't you?' said Mr. Ancrum, looking up at him. 'Who helps you in your Greek?' 'No one; I get translations.'