Madame Astier was familiar with this dogged silence. This attitude of passive resistance, dead as a ball of cotton, was always put on when money was mentioned. But this time she was resolved to make him answer. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see you rolling up, Master Hedgehog. I know the meaning of that. “Nothing to be got! nothing to be got! No, no, no!” Eh?’ The back grew rounder and rounder. ‘But you can find money for M. Fage.’ Astier started, sat up, and looked uneasily at his wife. Money for M. Fage? What did she mean?’ Why, of course,’ she went on, delighted to have forced the barrier of his silence, ‘of course it takes money to do all that binding. And what’s the good of it, I should like to know, for all those old scraps?’ He felt relieved; evidently she knew nothing; it was only a chance shot. But the term ‘old scraps’ went to his heart: unique autograph documents, signed letters of Richelieu, Colbert, Newton, Galileo, Pascal, marvels bought for an old song, and worth a fortune. ‘Yes, madam, a fortune.’ He grew excited, and began to quote figures, the offers that had been made him. Bos, the famous Bos of the Rue de l’Abbaye (and he knew his business if any one did), Bos had offered him eight hundred pounds merely for three specimens from his collection--three letters from Charles the Fifth to François Rabelais. Old scraps indeed! Madame Astier listened in utter amazement. She was well aware that for the last two or three years he had been collecting old manuscripts. He used sometimes to speak to her of his finds, and she listened in a wandering absent-minded way, as a woman does listen to a man’s voice when she has heard it for thirty years. But this was beyond her conception. Eight hundred pounds for three letters! And why did he not take it?’ He burst out like an explosion of dynamite. ‘Sell my Charles the Fifths! Never! I would see you all without bread and begging from door to door before I would touch them--understand that!’ He struck the table. His face was very pale, and his lips thrust out This fierce maniac was an Astier-Réhu whom his wife did not know. In the sudden glow of a passion human beings do thus take aspects unknown to those who know them best The next minute the Academician was quite calm, again, and was explaining, not without embarrassment, that these documents were indispensable to him as an author, especially now that he could not command the Records of the Foreign Office. To sell these materials would be to give up writing. On the contrary, he hoped to make additions to them. Then, with a touch of bitterness and affection, which betrayed the whole depth of the father’s disappointment, he said, ‘After my time, my fine gentleman of a son may sell them if he chooses; and since all he wants is to be rich, I will answer for it that he will be.’ ‘Yes; but meanwhile----’