nty
years had kept carefully locked up, as though to immure within it all the
incredulity and damnation of the past. And despite the gentleness, the
respectful submissiveness which she had shown in former times, she would
perhaps have some day ended by destroying all her husband's books and
papers, had not death so suddenly surprised her. Pierre, however, had
once more had the windows opened, the writing-table and the bookcase
dusted; and, installed in the large leather arm-chair, he now spent
delicious hours there, regenerated as it were by his illness, brought
back to his youthful days again, deriving a wondrous intellectual delight
from the perusal of the books which he came upon.

The only person whom he remembered having received during those two
months of slow recovery was Doctor Chassaigne, an old friend of his
father, a medical man of real merit, who, with the one ambition of curing
disease, modestly confined himself to the _role_ of the practitioner. It
was in vain that the doctor had sought to save Madame Froment, but he
flattered himself that he had extricated the young priest from grievous
danger; and he came to see him from time to time, to chat with him and
cheer him, talking with him of his father, the great chemist, of whom he
recounted many a charming anecdote, many a particular, still glowing with
the flame of ardent friendship. Little by little, amidst the weak languor
of convalescence, the son had thus beheld an embodiment of charming
simplicity, affection, and good nature rising up before him. It was his
father such as he had really been, not the man of stern science whom he
had pictured whilst listening to his mother. Certainly she had never
taught him aught but respect for that dear memory; but had not her
husband been the unbeliever, the man who denied, and made the angels
weep, the artisan of impiety who sought to change the world that God had
made? And so he had long remained a gloomy vision, a spectre of damnation
prowling about the house, whereas now he became the house's very light,
clear and gay, a worker consumed by a longing for truth, who had never
desired anything but the love and happiness of all. For his part, Doctor
Chassaigne, a Pyrenean by birth, born in a far-off secluded village where
folks still believed in sorceresses, inclined rather towards religion,
although he had not set his foot inside a church during the forty years
he had been living in Paris. However, his conviction was