"

"Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but
millionnaires."

Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen
in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by
the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu. Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass.
Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each
other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.

Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it
reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the
day of his first visit.

Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller's in the
rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the
finest edition published in France of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ."
Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner
hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was
conscious of a new impulse in his soul. He was seized by a sudden and
deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire.
He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire
to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to
deserve her praise: in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic
love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed
to know it in its entirety. He grew impatient to enter the inner lives
of these pure Catholics. In that small company of faithful souls, the
majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that
is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no
stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little
body. These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy
Parisian eagerly occupied with life, but Godefroid was, as we have seen,
in the position of a drowning man who catches at every floating branch
thinking it a solid stay, and his soul, ploughed and furrowed with
trial, was ready to receive all seed.

He found the four friends in the salon, and he presented the book to
Madame de la Chanterie, saying:

"I did not like to deprive you of it to-night."

"God grant," she said, smiling, as she looked at the magnificent volume,
"that this may be your last excess of elegance."

Looking at the clothes of the four men present and observing how in
every particular they were reduced to mere utility and neatness, and