e wife of the Permanent Secretary. To this sort of
hospitality Madame Loisillon was indebted for her present appointment
as school-manager, and Madame Astier would certainly not be less clever
than her predecessor in utilising the convenience. The only drawback to
her triumph was her quarrel with the Duchess, which made it impossible
for her to follow Paul to Mousseaux. But an invitation, opportunely
arriving at this moment, enabled her to get as near to him as the house
at Clos Jallanges; and she had hopes of recovering in time the favour
of the fair Antonia, towards whom, when she saw her so kind to Paul she
began again to feel quite affectionate.

Leonard could not leave Paris, having to work off the arrears of
business left by Loisillon. He let his wife go however, and promised to
come down to their friends for a few hours now and then, though in truth
he was resolved not to separate himself from his beloved Institute. It
was so comfortable and quiet! He had to attend two meetings in the week,
just on the other side of the court--summer meetings, where a friendly
party of five or six 'tallymen' dozed at ease under the warm glass.
The rest of the week he was entirely free, and the old man employed it
industriously in correcting the proofs of his 'Galileo,' which, finished
at last, was to come out at the opening of the season, as well as a
second edition of 'The House of Orleans,' improved to twice its value by
the addition of new and unpublished documents. As the world grows old,
history, which being but a collective memory of the race is liable to
all the lapses, losses, and weaknesses of memory in the individual,
finds it ever more necessary to be fortified with authentic texts, and
if it would escape the errors of senility, must refresh itself at the
original springs. With what pride, therefore, with what enjoyment
did Astier-Rehu, during those hot August days, revise the fresh and
trustworthy information displayed in his beloved pages, as a preparation
for returning them to his publisher, with the heading on which, for the
first time, appeared beneath his name the words 'Secretaire perpetuel
de l'Academie Francaise.' His eyes were not yet accustomed to the
title, which dazzled him on each occasion, like the sun upon the white
courtyard beneath his windows. It was the vast Second Court of the
Institute, private and majestic, silent, but for sparrows or swallows
passing rarely overhead, and consecrated by a bronze b