y. Besides, the doctrine of Pythagoras was not wholly
displeasing to him; and in the rare interviews which he henceforth had
with his friend he would declare that, without exactly believing in
metempsychosis, and without making it a rule to eat vegetables only, he
felt a secret joy at being able to live thus, and at having no further
occasion to see death dealt out every day to innocent animals.

Patience had formed this curious resolution at the age of forty. He was
sixty when I saw him for the first time, and he was then possessed of
extraordinary physical vigour. In truth, he was in the habit of roaming
about the country every year. However, in proportion as I tell you about
my own life, I shall give you details of the hermit life of Patience.

At the time of which I am about to speak, the forest rangers, more
from fear of his casting a spell over them than out of compassion, had
finally ceased their persecutions, and given him full permission to
live in Gazeau Tower, not, however, without warning him that it would
probably fall about his head during the first gale of wind. To this
Patience had replied philosophically that if he was destined to be
crushed to death, the first tree in the forest would do the work quite
as well as the walls of Gazeau Tower.

Before putting my actor Patience on the stage, and with many apologies
for inflicting on you such a long preliminary biography, I have still to
mention that during the twenty years of which I have spoken the cure's
mind had bowed to a new power. He loved philosophy, and in spite of
himself, dear man, could not prevent this love from embracing the
philosophers too, even the least orthodox. The works of Jean Jacques
Rousseau carried him away into new regions, in spite of all his efforts
at resistance; and when one morning, when returning from a visit to some
sick folk, he came across Patience gathering his dinner of herbs from
the rocks of Crevant, he sat down near him on one of the druidical
stones and made, without knowing it, the profession of faith of the
Savoyard vicar. Patience drank more willingly of this poetic religion
than of the ancient orthodoxy. The pleasure with which he listened to
a summary of the new doctrines led the cure to arrange secret meetings
with him in isolated parts of Varenne, where they agreed to come
upon each other as if by chance. At these mysterious interviews the
imagination of Patience, fresh and ardent from long solitude, was fired