ss gave him a certain
individuality, I asked him whether he had come from Paris with Madame de
Bonne.

He nodded without speaking.

I asked him if he had known her long.

'Twelve months,' he answered. 'I lodged on the fifth, madame on the
second, floor of the same house in Paris.'

I leaned forward and plucked the hem of his black robe. 'What is this?'
I said, with a little contempt. 'You are not a priest, man.'

'No,' he answered, fingering the stuff himself, and gazing at me in a
curious, vacant fashion. 'I am a student of the Sorbonne.'

I drew off from him with a muttered oath, wondering--while I looked at
him with suspicious eyes--how he came to be here, and particularly how
he came to be in attendance on my mother, who had been educated from
childhood in the Religion, and had professed it in private all her life.
I could think of no one who, in old days, would have been less welcome
in her house than a Sorbonnist, and began to fancy that here should lie
the secret of her miserable condition.

'You don't like, the Sorbonne?' he said, reading my thoughts; which
were, indeed, plain enough.

'No more than I love the devil!' I said bluntly.

He leaned forward and, stretching out a thin, nervous hand, laid it
on my knee. 'What if they are right, though?' he muttered, his voice
hoarse. 'What if they are right, M. de Marsac?'

'Who right?' I asked roughly, drawing back afresh.

'The Sorbonne.' he repeated, his face red with excitement, his eyes
peering uncannily into mine. 'Don't you see,' he continued, pinching
my knee in his earnestness, and thrusting his face nearer and nearer
to mine, 'it all turns on that? It all turns on that--salvation or
damnation! Are they right? Are you right? You say yes to this, no to
that, you white-coats; and you say it lightly, but are you right? Are
you right? Mon Dieu!' he continued, drawing back abruptly and clawing
the air with impatience, 'I have read, read, read! I have listened to
sermons, theses, disputations, and I know nothing. I know no more than
when I began.'

He sprang up and began to pace the floor, while I gazed at him with a
feeling of pity. A very learned person once told me that the troubles of
these times bred four kinds of men, who were much to be compassionated:
fanatics on the one side or the other, who lost sight of all else in the
intensity of their faith; men who, like Simon Fleix, sought desperately
after something to believe, and found it not; and