hin.
And his hands are those of a prelate.

"The second time I called on him he received me in his bed-room,
adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonishment when I saw there
a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby carpet, a camp-bed, and cotton
window-curtains. He came out of his private room, to which no one is
admitted, as Jerome informed me; the man did not go in, but merely
knocked at the door.

"The third time he was breakfasting in his library on the most frugal
fare; but on this occasion, as he had spent the night studying our
documents, as I had my attorney with me, and as that worthy Monsieur
Girardet is long-winded, I had leisure to study the stranger. He
certainly is no ordinary man. There is more than one secret behind that
face, at once so terrible and so gentle, patient and yet impatient,
broad and yet hollow. I saw, too, that he stooped a little, like all men
who have some heavy burden to bear."

"Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris? For what purpose did he come to
Besancon?" asked pretty Madame de Chavoncourt. "Could no one tell him
how little chance a stranger has of succeeding here? The good folks of
Besancon will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make use
of them. Why, having come, did he make so little effort that it needed a
freak of the President's to bring him forward?"

"After carefully studying that fine head," said the Abbe, looking keenly
at the lady who had interrupted him, in such a way as to suggest that
there was something he would not tell, "and especially after hearing
him this morning reply to one of the bigwigs of the Paris Bar, I believe
that this man, who may be five-and-thirty, will by and by make a great
sensation."

"Why should we discuss him? You have gained your action, and paid him,"
said Madame de Watteville, watching her daughter, who, all the time the
Vicar-General had been speaking, seemed to hang on his lips.

The conversation changed, and no more was heard of Albert Savaron.

The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the Vicars-General of the
diocese had all the greater charm for Rosalie because there was a
romance behind it. For the first time in her life she had come
across the marvelous, the exceptional, which smiles on every youthful
imagination, and which curiosity, so eager at Rosalie's age, goes forth
to meet half-way. What an ideal being was this Albert--gloomy, unhappy,
eloquent, laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to t