“_Tiens!_ Paul,” he would say, “here's an old fool has blundered through the greater part of his life without guessing till now how easy a thing content is to come by. Why, 'tis no more than a loose waistcoat and a chemise unbuttoned at the neck. I dared not be happy thus in Dixmunde, where the folks were plaguily particular that their priest should be point-devise, as if mortal man had time to tend his soul and keep a constant eye on the lace of his fall.” And he would stretch himself--a very mountain of sloth--in his chair. With me 'twas different. Even in a gaol I felt sure a day begun untidily was a day ill-done by. If I had no engagements with the fastidious fashionable world I had engagements with myself; moreover, I shared my father's sentiment, that a good day's darg of work with any thinking in it was never done in a pair of slippers down at the heel. Thus I was as peijink (as we say) in Bicêtre as I would have been at large in the genteel world. “Not,” he would admit, “but that I love to see thee in a decent habit, and so constant plucking at thy hose, for I have been young myself, and had some right foppish follies, too. But now, my good man Dandiprat, my _petit-maître_, I am old--oh, so old!--and know so much of wisdom, and have seen such a confusion of matters, that I count comfort the greatest of blessings. The devil fly away with buttons and laces! say I, that have been parish priest of Dixmunde--and happily have not killed a man nor harmed a flea, though like enough to get killed myself.” The weather was genial, yet he sat constantly hugging the fire, and I at the window, which happily gave a prospect of the yard between our building and that of Galbanon. I would be looking out there, and perhaps pining for freedom, while he went prating on upon the scurviest philosophy surely ever man gave air to. [Illustration: 226] “Behold, my scrivener, how little man wants for happiness! My constant fear in Dixmunde was that I would become so useless for all but eating and sleeping, when I was old, that no one would guarantee me either; poverty took that place at my table the skull took among the Romans--the thought on't kept me in a perpetual apprehension. _Nom de chien!_ and this was what I feared--this, a hard lodging, coarse viands, and sour wine! What was the fellow's name?--Demetrius, upon the taking of Megara, asked Monsieur Un-tel the Philosopher what he had lost. 'Nothing at all,' said he, 'for I have all that I could call my own about me,' and yet 'twas no more than the skin he stood in. A cell in Bicêtre would have been paradise to such a gallant fellow. Oh, Paul, I fear thou may'st be ungrateful--I would be looking out there, and perhaps pining for freedom,” he went prating on, “to this good Buhot, who has given us such a fine lodging, and saved us the care of providing for ourselves.”