"But I have long remarked it. His own individuality fights the alien matter, and it is not till he has either rejected it or absorbed that he is steady again. Wurst and his Russians have excited him--nothing more natural. For me," said M. Lemaure, plunging into memory, as he stood by his son's side at the window, "at his age, the realm of music did not hold such petulant passions, any more than it held flat heresy, like that of Sorbier and Duchâtel." "Antoine adores Duchâtel," remarked Lucien. "There is no fighting there." "Bon!" The old man laughed. "Heresy on the hearth then, if it must be so. So long as he does not play the stuff in my hearing." There are over six hundred pages in the story, and they cover just a year and a half of Antoine's life. This appears to be an impossible literary feat; any orthodox novelist will tell you that you can't hold a reader through six hundred pages with the story of a fourteen-year-old boy. But Miss Sidgwick's holding power is--well, I read _Succession_ during a brief trip to Boston, and much as I longed to absorb Concord and all its charms, I found I only had half my capacity with me; the rest was with Antoine, and it stayed there till in desperation I shut myself up in a hotel room and saw him safely off to America with his nice, wholesome, inartistic father. Then came the awful realization that I'd have to wait a whole year for the next volume--for surely Miss Sidgwick intends to make a trilogy. The explanation of this absorption is simply that Antoine is so interesting. His professional life is dramatic; but even in the commonest experiences of every day his world is as vivid as it can only be to a dramatic nature. For instance, in this little scene with his brother: "There was a little thing on legs," he announced, "that went under the carpet just now. It was rather horrible, and I have not looked for it." "A blackbeetle, I presume," said Philip. "It was not black," said Antoine. "It was pink--a not-clean pink, you understand. I found it"--a pause--"disagreeable." "How could you find it when you had not looked for it?" said Philip. Another pause, Antoine considering the point, which was an old one. "You will catch it," he suggested, shooting a soft glance at his brother. "Why should I?" said Philip. "They're perfectly harmless." "I shall dream of it," said Antoine, shutting his eyes. "It was too long, do you see, and pink as well." His brow contracted, and he finished with gentle conviction. "If it comes upon my bed in the night, I shall be sick."