THE GEOMETRICIAN.--_Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra. Est modus in retus. Caveas fine quidnimie._ THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I have learned a little of history, and something of geometry; but I do not understand a word of Latin. THE GEOMETRICIAN.--The sense is, pretty nearly, as follows. _There is wrong on both sides. Keep to a medium in every thing. Nothing too much._ THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--I say, nothing too much; that is really my situation; but the worst of it is, I have not enough. THE GEOMETRICIAN.--I allow that you must perish of want, and I too, and the state too, if the new administration should continue only two years longer; but it is to be hoped heaven will have mercy on us. THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS.--We pass our lives in hope, and die hoping to the last. Adieu, sir, you have enlightened me, but my heart is grieved. THE GEOMETRICIAN.--This is, indeed, often the fruit of knowledge. [Illustration: Palace of the barefooted Carmelites.--"What would you please to have, my son?"--"A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of everything."--"Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."] IV. AN ADVENTURE WITH A CARMELITE. When I had thanked the academician of the Academy of Sciences, for having set me right, I went away quite out of heart, praising providence, but muttering between my teeth these doleful words: "_What! to have no more than forty crowns a year to live on, nor more than twenty-two years to live!_ Alas! may our life be yet shorter, since it is to be so miserable!" As I was saying this, I found myself just opposite a very superb house. Already was I feeling myself pressed by hunger. I had not so much as the hundred and twentieth part of the sum that by right belongs to each individual. But as soon as I was told that this was the palace of my reverend fathers, the bare-footed Carmelites, I conceived great hopes, and said to myself, since these saints are humble enough to go bare-footed, they will be charitable enough to give me a dinner. I rang. A Carmelite came to the door. "What would you please to have, my son?" "A morsel of bread, my reverend father. The new edicts have stripped me of every thing." "Son, know that we ourselves beg charity; we do not bestow it."[1] "What! while your holy institute forbids you to wear shoes, you have the house of a prince, and can you refuse to me a meal?" "My son, it is true, we go without stockings and shoes; that is an expense the less; we feel no more cold in our feet than in our hands. As to our fine house, we built it very easily, as we have a hundred thousand livres a year of income from houses in the same street." "So, then! you suffer me to die of hunger, while you have an income of a hundred thousand livres! I suppose you pay fifty thousand of these to the new government?"