en he was alone and entirely happy.

He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face.
'What do you think of my singing?' he inquired, stopping in the middle of
a note; and then, after he had waited some little while and received no
answer, 'What do you think of my singing?' he repeated, imperiously.

'I do not like it,' faltered Jean-Marie.

'Oh, come!' cried the Doctor. 'Possibly you are a performer yourself?'

'I sing better than that,' replied the boy.

The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction. He was aware that
he was angry, and blushed for himself in consequence, which made him
angrier. 'If this is how you address your master!' he said at last, with
a shrug and a flourish of his arms.

'I do not speak to him at all,' returned the boy. 'I do not like him.'

'Then you like me?' snapped Doctor Desprez, with unusual eagerness.

'I do not know,' answered Jean-Marie.

The Doctor rose. 'I shall wish you a good morning,' he said. 'You are
too much for me. Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps celestial
ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;
but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:--that you are no human being.
No, boy'--shaking his stick at him--'you are not a human being. Write,
write it in your memory--"I am not a human being--I have no pretension to
be a human being--I am a dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, an
illusion--what you please, but not a human being." And so accept my
humble salutations and farewell!'

And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, and
the boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him.

CHAPTER III. THE ADOPTION.

Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to look
upon, a stout _brune_, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and
hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort of
person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in the
worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a
moment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity of
a contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie was of
a very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold
pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than for
his. She was imperturbably good-natured, but had no i