of an earlier day. Having fallen out with his bishop,
the ambitious ecclesiastic had left the diocese where he formerly
exercised the priestly functions, and, in his precarious position as an
irregular member of the clergy--for the clergy has its own Bohemia--was
glad of the opportunity to teach the little Jansoulets, recently
expelled from Bourdaloue. With the same solemn, arrogant mien, as of one
overburdened with responsibility, which the great prelates intrusted
with the education of the Dauphins of France might assume, he stalked
in front of three little fellows, curled and gloved, with oblong hats
and short jackets, leather bags slung over their shoulders, and long red
stockings reaching to the middle of the leg, the costume of the complete
velocipedist about to mount his machine.

"Children," said Cabassu, the intimate friend of the family, "this is
Madame Jansoulet, your grandmother, who has come to Paris on purpose to
see you."

They halted, very much astonished, arranged according to height, and
examined that withered old face between the yellow barbs of the cap,
that strange costume, unfamiliar in its simplicity; and their
grandmother's astonishment answered theirs, increased by heart-rending
disappointment and by the embarrassment she felt in presence of those
little gentlemen, who were as stiff and disdainful as the marquises, the
counts and the prefects on circuit whom her son used to bring to her at
Saint-Romans. In obedience to their tutor's injunction, "to salute their
venerable grandmother," they came up one by one and gave her one of the
same little handshakes with arms close to their sides of which they had
distributed so many among the garrets; indeed, that good woman with the
earth-colored face, and neat but very simple clothes, reminded them of
their charitable visits from College Bourdaloue. They felt between
herself and them the same strangeness, the same distance, which no
memory, no word from their parents had ever lessened. The abbe realized
her embarrassment, and, to banish it, launched forth upon a speech
delivered with the throaty voice, the violent gestures common to those
men who always think that they have below them the ten steps leading to
a pulpit:

"Lo, the day has come, Madame, the great day when Monsieur Jansoulet is
to confound his enemies. _Confundantur hostes mei, quia injuste
iniquitatem fecerunt in me_,--because they have persecuted me unjustly."

The old woman bowed devo