eed only one thing to make me contented," said Godefroid.

"What is that?" asked the banker.

"An occupation."

"An occupation!" remarked the Abbe de Veze. "Then you have changed your
mind? I thought you came to our cloister for rest."

"Rest, without the prayers that enlivened monasteries, without the
meditation which peopled the Thebaids, becomes a disease," said Monsieur
Joseph, sententiously.

"Learn book-keeping," said Monsieur Mongenod, with a smile; "you might
become in a few months very useful to my friends here."

"Oh! with pleasure," cried Godefroid.

The next day was Sunday; Madame de la Chanterie requested him to give
her his arm to high mass.

"It is," she said, "the only coercion I shall put upon you. Several
times during the past week I have wished to speak to you of religion,
but it did not seem to me that the time had come. You would find plenty
of occupation if you shared our beliefs, for then you would share our
labors as well."

During mass Godefroid noticed the fervor of Messieurs Nicolas, Joseph,
and Alain; and as during the last few days he had also noticed their
superiority and intelligence, and the vast extent of their knowledge;
he concluded, when he saw how they humbled themselves, that the Catholic
religion had secrets which had hitherto escaped him.

"After all," he said to himself, "it is the religion of Bossuet, Pascal,
Racine, Saint-Louis, Louis XIV., Raffaelle, Michel-Angelo, Ximenes,
Bayard, du Guesclin; and how could I, weakling that I am, compare myself
to those intellects, those statesmen, those poets, those heroes?"

If there were not some real instruction in these minor details it
would be imprudent to dwell upon them in these days; but they are
indispensable to the interests of this history, in which the present
public will be none too ready to believe, and which presents at the
outset a fact that is almost ridiculous,--namely, the empire which a
woman of sixty obtained over a young man disappointed with the world.

"You did not pray at all," said Madame de la Chanterie to Godefroid as
they left the portal of Notre-Dame; "not for any one,--not even for the
soul of your mother."

Godefroid colored and said nothing.

"Will you do me the favor," continued Madame de la Chanterie, "to go to
your room and not come into the salon for an hour? You can meditate,
if you love me, on the first chapter in the third book of the
'Imitation'--the one entitled: 'Of inward communin