was, in a fashion, a Moses."

He fumbled in his pocket and drew from a book a letter, worn and spotted.

"This is what Madame Raymond, the Academician's wife, writes me. I
publish what she says, because it is creditable to her."

And, unfolding the thin leaves, he read:

"I have made your book known to my husband, who exclaimed: 'It is pure
spiritualism. Here is a closed garden, which on the side of the lilies
and white roses has, I imagine, a small gate opening on the road to the
Academie.'"

Choulette relished these phrases, mingled in his mouth with the perfume
of whiskey, and replaced carefully the letter in its book.

Madame Martin congratulated the poet on being Madame Raymond's candidate.

"You should be mine, Monsieur Choulette, if I were interested in Academic
elections. But does the Institute excite your envy?"

He kept for a few moments a solemn silence, then:

"I am going now, Madame, to confer with divers notable persons of the
political and religious worlds who reside at Neuilly. The Marquise de
Rieu wishes me to be a candidate, in her country, for a senatorial seat
which has become vacant by the death of an old man, who was, they say, a
general during his illusory life. I shall consult with priests, women and
children--oh, eternal wisdom!--of the Bineau Boulevard. The constituency
whose suffrages I shall attempt to obtain inhabits an undulated and
wooded land wherein willows frame the fields. And it is not a rare thing
to find in the hollow of one of these old willows the skeleton of a
Chouan pressing his gun against his breast and holding his beads in his
fleshless fingers. I shall have my programme posted on the bark of oaks.
I shall say 'Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when bishops,
holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves similar to
the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who
crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they still
retain these names before the Son of God. While they were nailing Him to
the cross, I was the good thief hanged by His side.'"

He lifted his stick and pointed toward Neuilly:

"Dechartre, my friend, do you not think the Bineau Boulevard is the dusty
one over there, at the right?"

"Farewell, Monsieur Choulette," said Therese. "Remember me when you are a
senator."

"Madame, I do not forget you in any of my prayers, morning and evening.
And I say to God: 'Since, in your anger, you gave to her ri