O simple people, what an illusion was yours! You could not have hit upon a worse intermediary. I figuring as a postulant! I have many faults, I admit, but that is certainly not one of them. I got rid of the importunate people as best I could, though they were utterly unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they known of the minister’s offers with regard to my laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile-skin to hang from my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot. Six months elapsed; and I received a letter summoning me to call upon the minister at his office. I suspected a proposal to promote me to a more important grammar-school, and wrote begging that I might be left where I was, among my vats and my insects. A second letter arrived, more pressing than the first and signed by the minister’s own hand. This letter said: “Come at once, or I shall send my gendarmes to fetch you.” There was no way out of it. Twenty-four hours later I was in M. Duruy’s room. He welcomed me with exquisite cordiality, gave me his hand and, taking up a number of the Moniteur: “Read that,” he said. “You refused my chemical apparatus; but you won’t refuse this.” I looked at the line to which his finger pointed. I read my name in the list of the Legion of Honour. Quite stupid with surprise, I stammered the first words of thanks that entered my head. “Come here,” said he, “and let me give you the accolade. I will be your sponsor. You will like the ceremony all the better if it is held in private, between you and me: I know you!” He pinned the red ribbon to my coat, kissed me on both cheeks, made me telegraph the great event to my family. What a morning, spent with that good man! I well know the vanity of decorative ribbonry and tinware, especially when, as too often happens, intrigue degrades the honour conferred; but, coming as it did, that bit of ribbon is precious to me. It is a relic, not an object for show. I keep it religiously in a drawer. There was a parcel of big books on the table, a collection of the reports on the progress of science drawn up for the International Exhibition of 1867, which had just closed. “Those books are for you,” continued the minister. “Take them with you. You can look through them at your leisure: they may interest you. There is something about your insects in them. You’re to have this too: it will pay for your journey. The trip which I made you take must not be at your own expense. If there is anything over, spend it on your laboratory.” And he handed me a roll of twelve hundred francs. In vain I refused, remarking that my journey was not so burdensome as all that; besides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of inestimable value compared with my disbursements. He insisted: