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But now came the worst of it all. The bear put his paw on his heart, and with the politest bow in the world, remarked: "Pardon me, ladies, if I intrude." He had meant to say more, but his audience had vanished; only the flying tails of Mathias's coat were seen, as he slammed the door on them, in his precipitate flight. "Police! police!" someone shouted out of the window of the adjoining room.
The sailor is, in all lands, a being of a race apart, holding all land-folk in contempt. This one happened to be a bas-Breton, who saw but one thing in Maitre Mathias's request. "Come ashore, indeed!" he thought, as he rowed. "Make the captain lose a passenger! If one listened to those walruses we'd have nothing to do but embark and disembark 'em. He's afraid that son of his will catch cold."
It was not to discuss the resurrection that he desired to see these men, but for curiosity; and during the long walk he would meditate on Mathias's doctrines.... Mathias did not answer him, and Joseph, seeing him cast away in philosophy and unable to advise him further, went to the president to ask for permission to absent himself for two days from the cenoby, a permission that was granted willingly when the object of the absence was duly related.
"I believe it was so termed." "And now you say that you reject the creed?" "Since I have witnessed the conduct of those who profess it, I do. At the time of my marriage I was disposed towards it." "What is the amount of your property in the Father Mathias's hands." "Some hundreds of dollars he knows exactly."
He fell to considering the question afresh, and forgetful of Mathias's admonitions that the business of man is to meditate on the nature of God he said: the Essenes perform no miracles and do not prophesy; an interruption to Mathias's loquacity which the other took with a better grace than Joseph had expected for no one ever dared before to interrupt Mathias.
Mathias's very words; but when he said them, there seemed to be something behind the words; while listening, it seemed to Joseph that sight had been given to him, but his eyes proved too weak to bear the too great illumination, and he had been obliged to cover them with his hands, shutting out a great deal so that he might see just a little ... as it were between his fingers.
To burst open the door and rush into the cell was but the work of a moment. At this the woman rallied a little and recovered herself. "What is the matter?" asked the governor. "The chimney!" gasped the woman faintly. "The chimney! Speak explain." "His blood Mathias's," she said; "see the chimney. I dare not look."
He drew up the basis of a treaty for Mathias's acceptance, on terms which guaranteed to the council of state and the states-general the virtual sovereignty, and left to the young prince little beyond the fine title which had dazzled his boyish vanity. But a still greater disappointment attended this ambitious nobleman in the very stronghold of his power.
To the end of his life Joseph kept in his memory the moment when he sat in the corner of the hall, his eyes fixed upon Mathias's young and beautiful profile, clear cut, hard and decisive as the profiles of the young gods that decorated the Greek coins which shocked him in Cæsarea.
The cause of the rupture would surely be made known; Maitre Mathias's stern honor was too well known in Bordeaux; his word would be believed in preference to hers. The scoffers would turn against her and against her daughter. No, she could not break it off; she must yield! These reflections, so cruelly sound, fell upon Madame Evangelista's brain like a water-spout and split it.
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