de had said to him; "it
makes us a return in proportion to our efforts."

Godefroid was in debt. As a first test, a first task, he resolved to
live in some retired place, and pay his debts from his income. To a man
accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was
no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand. Every
morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some
asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the
solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines
himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation. The manners and
customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy, sanitariums
seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back into the fatal
irresolution of persons without will, when the following advertisement
met his eye:--

"To Let. A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for
an ecclesiastic. A quiet tenant desired. Board supplied; the rooms
can be furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.

"Inquire of M. Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame,
where all further information can be obtained."

Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and
the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the
afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o'clock on the
grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining,
and did not receive any one when at her meals. The lady, he said, was
visible in the evening after seven o'clock, or in the morning between
ten and twelve. While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid,
and made him submit to what magistrates call the "first degree of
interrogation."

"Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the
gate was closed at eleven at the latest. Monsieur certainly seemed of an
age to suit Madame de la Chanterie."

"How old do you think me?" asked Godefroid.

"About forty!" replied the grocer.

This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic
gloom. He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la
Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame
at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and
breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.

The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and
the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of th