It was an extraordinary act of courage on the part of a nature reserved, shy, and socially timid; no one who knew him would have credited him with it; but he made no confidant of any. When the two letters were written, sealed, and lying ready for dispatch, Luc, with a flush like fever in his cheek, took up the pen again and wrote a third---- To M. de Voltaire. A thousand hopes and questions rose in his bosom, eager for expression; but modesty and pride together forbade that he should put anything intimate before a stranger. He made the subject of his letter his opinion of Corneille and Racine; he asked the judgment of the great arbitrator of letters as to the relative merits of the two geniuses; he expressed the criticism he had conceived on the rival masters, and begged to know if he was right or wrong. He gave the address of an inn he knew in Paris, and prayed that the answer might be sent there, if M. de Voltaire deigned to answer. He sealed this letter with more agitation than he had felt when writing either to the King or to the Minister, and with all three in his pocket went downstairs to post them. When he reached the hall, he hesitated a moment, then turned into the sombre withdrawing-room in the front. The candles had just been lit and the curtains drawn, for, though not late, it was a wet, dreary day. Round the hearth sat his mother, Joseph’s wife, and Clémence de Séguy; Joseph was at the clavichord, his father on the sofa with a little book in his hand. The tender figures and light dresses of the women were surrounded with soft shadows from the rosy firelight; Clémence held up a pink silk hand-screen which cast a full glow of radiant light over her small sweet features and pale curls. The pretty whisper of talk was hushed as Luc entered and there was a second’s pause, caused, though he did not guess it, by the instant impression of extreme delicacy he made as he stood before the open door, the candlelight full on him, and behind him the background of the dark shadows of the hall. He was unusually pale, and his eyes were too lustrous, too wide and bright, too deeply shadowed for health. His dark, simple, and rather careless dress, the plain waves of his smooth hair, accentuated the impression he made of something uncommon, exceptional; but this sense of difference was mainly caused by his expression, by a certain smile and flash in his eyes, by an extraordinary sweetness in the lines of the mouth and chin, by a proud look of motion in his carriage which was like swiftness arrested. His sudden silent appearance made all who gazed at him realize in a flash his exceeding, uncommon beauty; it was as if they regarded a stranger, they even felt afraid of him. He, all unconscious, came to the table where his mother’s tambour frame lay, and affectionately turned over the lengths of silks. “How quickly you work!” he smiled.