derness. He
wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man who introduced
_la paperasserie_ into the September massacres. But as emotional
tenderness leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against the
victims. There is no help for it. It is the sentimentality of the age.
The assassin is pitied, but the victim is considered quite
unpardonable. In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever
before. There is no common-sense in it; it is simply wonderful!
Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies
and fainting spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never
deigns to explain. Childish outcries--_envies de femme grosse!_--and a
style, my friends!--not a single finished phrase! It is astounding!"

And he handed the book back to his comrade. "This is amusing madness,"
I thought to myself, "and not quite so devoid of common-sense as it
appears. This young man, though only playing, has sharply touched the
defect in the cuirass."

But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly
despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true
history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path
when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell
back into the old rut almost immediately afterwards.

After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist
went to join a party of passing friends. The two archivists, less well
acquainted in the neighborhood of a garden so far from the Rue
Paradis-aux-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about their
studies. Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was preparing
a thesis, on the subject of which he expatiated with youthful
enthusiasm. Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one,
particularly because I had recently thought myself called upon to
treat a notable part of it. It was the 'Monasticum Gallicanum.' The
young erudite (I give him the name as a presage) wants to describe all
the engravings made about 1690 for the work which Dom Michel Germain
would have had printed, but for the one irremediable hindrance which
is rarely foreseen and never avoided. Dom Michel Germain left his
manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died. Shall I
be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present
question. So far as I am able to understand, M. Gelis intends to
devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys pictured by
the humb