bly;
but the fall of the Emperor broke my neck."

"There is still time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place, what
did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do to get the cross?"

There la Peyrade laid his finger on a sore wound which Thuillier hid
from every eye so carefully that even his sister did not know of it; but
the young man, interested in studying these bourgeois, had divined the
secret envy that gnawed at the heart of the ex-official.

"If you, experienced as you are, will do the honor to follow my advice,"
added the philanthropist, "and, above all, not mention our compact
to any one, I will undertake to have you decorated with the Legion of
honor, to the applause of the whole quarter."

"Oh! if we succeed in that," cried Thuillier, "you don't know what I
would do for you."

This explains why Thuillier carried his head high when Theodose had the
audacity that evening to put opinions into his mouth.

In art--and perhaps Moliere had placed hypocrisy in the rank of art
by classing Tartuffe forever among comedians--there exists a point of
perfection to which genius alone attains; mere talent falls below it.
There is so little difference between a work of genius and a work
of talent, that only men of genius can appreciate the distance that
separates Raffaelle from Correggio, Titian from Rubens. More than that;
common minds are easily deceived on this point. The sign of genius is a
certain appearance of facility. In fact, its work must appear, at first
sight, ordinary, so natural is it, even on the highest subjects. Many
peasant-women hold their children as the famous Madonna in the Dresden
gallery holds hers. Well, the height of art in a man of la Peyrade's
force was to oblige others to say of him later: "Everybody would have
been taken in by him."

Now, in the salon Thuillier, he noted a dawning opposition; he perceived
in Colleville the somewhat clear-sighted and criticising nature of
an artist who has missed his vocation. The barrister felt himself
displeasing to Colleville, who (as the result of circumstances not
necessary to here report) considered himself justified in believing
in the science of anagrams. None of this anagrams had ever failed. The
clerks in the government office had laughed at him when, demanding an
anagram on the name of the poor helpless Auguste-Jean-Francois Minard,
he had produced, "J'amassai une si grande fortune"; and the event
had justified him after the lapse of ten years!