son out of his own knowledge
of life to know any better, believed them!

Jean shrugged his shoulders. One felt sorry for Father Anton! Perhaps
once in two years the cure journeyed as far as Marseilles--and the few
miles was a great event! What could one expect Father Anton to
discover for himself out of life?

Fame--an empty thing! Poor Father Anton, who, because he believed it,
so earnestly preached it to Papa Fregeau and Pierre Lachance who never
went even as far as Marseilles, and who therefore in turn were very
content to believe it, too! An empty thing? It was _everything_!

He drew in his breath sharply; his hand was feverishly tossing back the
hair from his forehead. It was everything! It was wealth, it was
power, it was might, it was greatness. It was real; it brought things
to the very senses one possessed, things that one could see and hear
and touch and taste and smell. They were real--real, those things! It
brought money that bought all things; it brought position, honour and
command, a name amongst the great names of France; it thrilled the soul
and fired the blood; it was limitless, boundless, without horizon. It
brought all things beyond the dreams that one could dream, the plaudits
of his fellow-men, the wild-flung shouts of acclamation from
hoarse-throated multitudes; it brought riches; it brought affluence;
and it brought--love.

Love! Ay, it would bring love! It would bring him that more than it
would bring him any other thing. He knew now what had held him back
from crushing that maddeningly alluring form in his arms, from giving
free rein to the passion that was his, from giving him the mastery of
her. It was that same thing that Marie-Louise sensed between herself
and what she called the _grand monde_. He, too, had not yet bridged
the gulf. He had not yet been able to look into those grey eyes of the
beautiful American and forget, deep in his soul, that she was
different, that he had been Jean Laparde the poor fisherman and not
always Jean Laparde the great sculptor. Was she playing with him?
What did it matter? The day would come when she would not _play_! She
would be his--and this fame, that was so empty a thing, would give her
to him. If for no other thing than that he would go to Paris. She
would be his--as all the world would be his! His! That is what fame
would bring him! Would she play with him then in his greatness!

Paris! Paris! It lay before him, a glitt