0), Anie (1891); Complices (1892); Conscience
(1893); and Amours de Jeunes et Amours de Vieux (1894).'

About this time Hector Malot resolved not to write fiction any more.
He announced this determination in a card published in the journal, 'Le
Temps,' May 25, 1895--It was then maliciously stated that "M. Malot his
retired from business after having accumulated a fortune." However, he
took up his pen again and published a history of his literary life:
Le Roman de mes Romans (1896); besides two volumes of fiction, L'Amour
dominateur (1896), and Pages choisies (1898), works which showed that,
in the language of Holy Writ, "his eye was not dimmed nor his natural
force abated," and afforded him a triumph over his slanderers.

EDOUARD PAILLERON
de l'Academie Francaise.

CONSCIENCE

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I. THE REUNION

When Crozat, the Bohemian, escaped from poverty, by a good marriage that
made him a citizen of the Rue de Vaugirard, he did not break with his
old comrades; instead of shunning them, or keeping them at a distance,
he took pleasure in gathering them about him, glad to open his house to
them, the comforts of which were very different from the attic of the
Rue Ganneron, that he had occupied for so long a time.

Every Wednesday, from four to seven o'clock, he had a reunion at his
house, the Hotel des Medicis, and it was a holiday for which his friends
prepared themselves. When a new idea occurred to one of the habitues it
was caressed, matured, studied in solitude, in order to be presented in
full bloom at the assembly.

Crozat's reception of his friends was pleasing, simple, like the man,
cordial on the part of the husband, as well as on the part of the wife,
who, having been an actress, held to the religion of comradeship: On a
table were small pitchers of beer and glasses; within reach was an old
stone jar from Beauvais, full of tobacco. The beer was good, the tobacco
dry, and the glasses were never empty.

And it was not silly subjects that were discussed here, worldly
babblings, or gossiping about absent friends, but the great questions
that ruled humanity: philosophy, politics, society, and religion.

Formed at first of friends, or, at least, of comrades who had worked and
suffered together, these reunions had enlarged gradually, until one day
the rooms at the Hotel des Medicis became a 'parlotte' where preachers
of ideas and of new religions, thinker