th books and surmounted by
bronze busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity. All was
in perfect order, an order which seemed never to have been disturbed
from the beginning of things.

Only, a black void was to be seen in the place which, only the evening
before, had been filled by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon.
Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked Monsieur Sariette,
pale, faded, and silent.

"Really and truly, you have not been nice," said Maurice, with a look of
reproach at Madame des Aubels.

She signed to him that the librarian might over-hear. But he reassured
her.

"Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has become a complete idiot."
And he repeated: "No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited you. You
did not come. You have made me unhappy."

After a moment's silence, while one heard the low melancholy whistling
of asthma in poor Sariette's bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued
insistently:

"You are wrong."

"Why wrong?"

"Wrong not to do as I ask you."

"Do you still think so?"

"Certainly."

"You meant it seriously?"

"As seriously as can be."

Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant feeling, and thinking
she had resisted sufficiently, Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had
refused him a fortnight ago.

They slipped into an embrasure of the window, behind an enormous
celestial globe whereon were graven the Signs of the Zodiac and the
figures of the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion, the
Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a multitude of Bibles, before
the works of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of
Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and
Epictetus, they exchanged vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.

Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought herself that she still
had some calls to pay, and that she must make her escape quickly, for
love had not made her lose all sense of her own importance. But she had
barely crossed the landing with Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and
saw Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming as he went:

"Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped from the shelf by
itself. It crossed the room ... there it is--there! It's going
downstairs. Stop it! It has gone out of the door on the ground floor!"

"What?" asked Maurice.

Monsieur Sariet