als and great men. Cells abort, others take their place,
and we have a scoundrel or a madman instead of a man of genius, or
simply an honest man. And humanity rolls on, bearing everything on its
tide."

Then in a new shifting of his thought, growing still more animated, he
continued:

"And animals--the beast that suffers and that loves, which is the rough
sketch, as it were, of man--all the animals our brothers, that live our
life, yes, I would have put them in the ark, I would give them a place
among our family, show them continually mingling with us, completing our
existence. I have known cats whose presence was the mysterious charm of
the household; dogs that were adored, whose death was mourned, and left
in the heart an inconsolable grief. I have known goats, cows, and asses
of very great importance, and whose personality played such a part that
their history ought to be written. And there is our Bonhomme, our poor
old horse, that has served us for a quarter of a century. Do you not
think that he has mingled his life with ours, and that henceforth he
is one of the family? We have modified him, as he has influenced us a
little; we shall end by being made in the same image, and this is so
true that now, when I see him, half blind, with wandering gaze, his legs
stiff with rheumatism, I kiss him on both cheeks as if he were a poor
old relation who had fallen to my charge. Ah, animals, all creeping and
crawling things, all creatures that lament, below man, how large a place
in our sympathies it would be necessary to give them in a history of
life!"

This was a last cry in which Pascal gave utterance to his passionate
tenderness for all created beings. He had gradually become more and more
excited, and had so come to make this confession of his faith in the
continuous and victorious work of animated nature. And Clotilde, who
thus far had not spoken, pale from the catastrophe in which her plans
had ended, at last opened her lips to ask:

"Well, master, and what am I here?"

She placed one of her slender fingers on the leaf of the tree on
which she saw her name written. He had always passed this leaf by. She
insisted.

"Yes, I; what am I? Why have you not read me my envelope?"

For a moment he remained silent, as if surprised at the question.

"Why? For no reason. It is true, I have nothing to conceal from you.
You see what is written here? 'Clotilde, born in 1847. Selection of the
mother. Reversional heredity, wi