valier du Halga the same questions which she had asked him the
evening before about his health. The chevalier made it a point of honor
to have new ailments. Inquiries might be alike, but the nautical hero
had singular advantages in the way of replies. To-day it chanced that
his ribs troubled him. But here's a remarkable thing! never did the
worthy chevalier complain of his wounds. The ills that were really the
matter with him he expected, he knew them and he bore them; but his
fancied ailments, his headaches, the gnawings in his stomach, the
buzzing in his ears, and a thousand other fads and symptoms made him
horribly uneasy; he posed as incurable,--and not without reason, for
doctors up to the present time have found no remedy for diseases that
don't exist.

"Yesterday the trouble was, I believe, in your legs," said the rector.

"It moves about," replied the chevalier.

"Legs to ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine.

"Without stopping on the way?" said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, smiling.

The chevalier bowed gravely, making a negative gesture which was not a
little droll, and proved to an observer that in his youth the sailor had
been witty and loving and beloved. Perhaps his fossil life at Guerande
hid many memories. When he stood, solemnly planted on his two heron-legs
in the sunshine on the mall, gazing at the sea or watching the gambols
of his little dog, perhaps he was living again in some terrestrial
paradise of a past that was rich in recollections.

"So the old Duc de Lenoncourt is dead," said the baron, remembering
the paragraph of the "Quotidienne," where his wife had stopped reading.
"Well, the first gentleman of the Bedchamber followed his master soon. I
shall go next."

"My dear, my dear!" said his wife, gently tapping the bony calloused
hand of her husband.

"Let him say what he likes, sister," said Zephirine; "as long as I am
above ground he can't be under it; I am the elder."

A gay smile played on the old woman's lips. Whenever the baron made
reflections of that kind, the players and the visitors present looked
at each other with emotion, distressed by the sadness of the king of
Guerande; and after they had left the house they would say, as they
walked home: "Monsieur du Guenic was sad to-night. Did you notice how he
slept?" And the next day the whole town would talk of the matter. "The
Baron du Guenic fails," was a phrase that opened the conversation in
many houses.

"How is Thisbe?" asked M