re out of date, that three
centuries of public education have since elapsed, and that the outlines
of those ages are more or less dim figures. Well, young man, do you
believe in the last demi-god of France, in Napoleon? One of his generals
was in disgrace all through his career; Napoleon made him a marshal
grudgingly, and never sent him on service if he could help it. That
marshal was Kellermann. Do you know the reason of the grudge? . . .
Kellermann saved France and the First Consul at Marengo by a brilliant
charge; the ranks applauded under fire and in the thick of the carnage.
That heroic charge was not even mentioned in the bulletin. Napoleon's
coolness toward Kellermann, Fouche's fall, and Talleyrand's disgrace
were all attributable to the same cause; it is the ingratitude of a
Charles VII., or a Richelieu, or ----"

"But, father," said Lucien, "suppose that you should save my life and
make my fortune, you are making the ties of gratitude somewhat slight."

"Little rogue," said the Abbe, smiling as he pinched Lucien's ear with
an almost royal familiarity. "If you are ungrateful to me, it will be
because you are a strong man, and I shall bend before you. But you are
not that just yet; as a simple 'prentice you have tried to be master
too soon, the common fault of Frenchmen of your generation. Napoleon's
example has spoiled them all. You send in your resignation because you
have not the pair of epaulettes that you fancied. But have you attempted
to bring the full force of your will and every action of your life to
bear upon your one idea?"

"Alas! no."

"You have been inconsistent, as the English say," smiled the canon.

"What I have been matters nothing now," said Lucien, "if I can be
nothing in the future."

"If at the back of all your good qualities there is power _semper
virens_," continued the priest, not averse to show that he had a little
Latin, "nothing in this world can resist you. I have taken enough of a
liking for you already----"

Lucien smiled incredulously.

"Yes," said the priest, in answer to the smile, "you interest me as much
as if you had been my son; and I am strong enough to afford to talk to
you as openly as you have just done to me. Do you know what it is that
I like about you?--This: you have made a sort of _tabula rasa_ within
yourself, and are ready to hear a sermon on morality that you will
hear nowhere else; for mankind in the mass are even more consummate
hypocrites than any on