e to us laden with His gifts. They return laden with
our prayers. Such is their task. Not an hour, not a moment passes but
they are at our side, ready to help us, ever fervent and unwearying
guardians, watchmen that never slumber."

"Quite so, Abbe," murmured Maurice, who was wondering by what cunning
artifice he could get on the soft side of his mother and persuade her to
give him some money of which he was urgently in need.

CHAPTER VI

WHEREIN PERE SARIETTE DISCOVERS HIS MISSING TREASURES

Next morning Monsieur Sariette entered Monsieur Rene d'Esparvieu's study
without knocking. He raised his arms to the heavens, his few hairs were
standing straight up on his head. His eyes were big with terror. In
husky tones he stammered out the dreadful news. A very old manuscript of
Flavius Josephus; sixty volumes of all sizes; a priceless jewel, namely,
a _Lucretius_ adorned with the arms of Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior
of France, with notes in Voltaire's own hand; a manuscript of Richard
Simon, and a set of Gassendi's correspondence with Gabriel Naude,
comprising two hundred and thirty-eight unpublished letters, had
disappeared. This time the owner of the library was alarmed.

He mounted in haste to the abode of the philosophers and the globes, and
there with his own eyes confirmed the magnitude of the disaster.

There were yawning gaps on many a shelf. He searched here and there,
opened cupboards, dragged out brooms, dusters, and fire-extinguishers,
rattled the shovel in the coke fire, shook out Monsieur Sariette's best
frock-coat that was hanging in the cloak-room, and then stood and gazed
disconsolately at the empty places left by the Gassendi portfolios.

For the past half-century the whole learned world had been loudly
clamouring for the publication of this correspondence. Monsieur Rene
d'Esparvieu had not responded to the universal desire, unwilling either
to assume so heavy a task, or to resign it to others. Having found much
boldness of thought in these letters, and many passages of more
libertine tendency than the piety of the twentieth century could endure,
he preferred that they should remain unpublished; but he felt himself
responsible for their safe-keeping, not only to his country but to the
whole civilized world.

"How can you have allowed yourself to be robbed of such a treasure?" he
asked severely of Monsieur Sariette.

"How can I have allowed myself to be robbed of such a treasure?"