The Immortal

Day, under the heading Astier-Réhu

ning favour extended to him by publishing, in rapid succession, The Great Ministers of Louis XIV. (crowned by the Académie Fran?aise), Bonaparte and the Concordat (crowned by the Académie Fran?aise), and the admirable Introduction to the History of the House of Orleans, a magnificent prologue to the work which was to occupy twenty years of his life. This time the Académie, having no more crowns to offer him, gave him a seat among its members. He could scarcely be called a stranger there, having married Mlle. Rèhu, daughter of the lamented Paulin Réhu, the celebrated architect, member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and granddaughter of the highly respected Jean Réhu, the father of the Académie Fran?aise, the elegant translator of Ovid an

regret for the ease and the honours of his office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on 'Teyssèdre's Wednesdays.' Teyssèdre was the man who polished the floors. He came to the Astiers' regularly every Wednesday. On the afternoon of that day Madame Astier was at home to her friends in her husband's study, this being the only presentable apartment of their third floor in the Rue de Beaune, the remains of a grand house, terribly inconvenient in spite of its magnificent ceiling. The disturbance caused to the illustrious historian by this 'Wednesday,' recurring every week and interrupting his industrious and methodical labours, may easily be conceived. He had come to hate the rubber of floor, a man from his own country, with a face as yellow, close, and hard as his own cake of beeswax. He hated Teyssèdre, who, proud of coming from Riom, while 'Meu

ed the Academician in hi

htier. It is the

er opened the door, because Core

The Academician did not answer. His son's habit of using ironically a tit

as he comes,' he said, not addressi

er.' And the bang-ba

orning,

Come in. Mind the

spite of her worn features and her too delicate skin. She did not move, but held out to him a cheek with a velve

. She was sitting on the carpet like a shepherdess in the fields, and was about to repair, at the hem of the skirt, her mis

expected elsewhere. He had his buggy below;

n blinds, on which the bright May sunlight lay in stripes, just far enough to see the neat little vehicle, sh

Coren-tine, who was also at the windo

o her, not without a suspicion what it would be, though her attention seemed to be absorbed in her sewing. Paul Astier was equally silent. He leaned back in an arm-chair and played with an ivory fan, an old thing which he had known for his mother's ever since he was born. Seen thus, the likeness between them was striking; the same Creole skin, pink

od, that,'

ked up. 'What

the bare arms and the line of the falling shoulder

ft without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced. And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew-though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out-all her coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all her

oor let?' asked t

ts no go! "I don't know what is the matter with them; but t

public. But Madame Astier did not laugh. That splendid first floor empty for the last two years! In the Rue Fortuny! A magnificent situation-a house in the style of Louis XI

worth tak

would want mone

e contractors were upon him-four hundred pounds for carpenter's

king-glass, grew pale and saw that she did so. It was the shiver that

oney for the restor

aux! Lo

e Rosen

Védrine still

ave Védrine? Your father

can't bear him a

walked abo

and not some one else to do my statue, you may suppose t

ppose?' She had been waiting for this ever since he

She said no more; but the pained expression

hat Corentine washes my linen in the kitchen because I should blush to give such rubbish to the laundress; and you know also that my worst mi

d be the better for me. But,' he continued, in his cool, off hand way, 'there is The M

. There is an

he works; his books se

ture, the worn curtains, the threadbare carpet, nothing of later date than

er whether my venerable sire is

ould not help smiling in spite of herself. No, on that point she thought there was no need for uneasiness. 'On

onspirators, with thei

but not in a tone of confi

a? You mu

n them all die rather than deprive himself of a pinch of snuff or a single one of the pins that were always stuc

ot like me to try

ry wh

s. I might get something

eavens! You ha

disagreeable expression in his eye; then recover

It is only a crisis to be got thro

her, he would be off. To keep him a few minutes longer, she began talking of an impo

: 'Who was it?' She had promised to say nothing at presen

he lady?'

show him the side vie

r with a fortune. If I succeed I might help

completel

es the Duch

othing of it

ear prince! And af

d the utter carelessness of one

she expect at h

hat is

in 1880. You can do the sum. J

!' cried Pau

a fact, it seems, that the most experienced of you know nothing about women. Well, you see, the poor prince could not have her hanging

-five thousand a year-intimate as she was with her, and well aware of their difficulties-had never so much as thought of helping them! What w

Year's day,' put in Paul ass

s in her blood, you know. Her father, the Marshal, was famous for it at the Court of Louis Philippe; and it was something to be thought stingy at the Court of Louis Philippe! These great Corsican families are all alike; nothing but meanness and pretension! They will eat chestnuts, such as the pigs would not

from the masthead. Meanwhile Paul, amused at first, had begun to listen impatiently, with his thoughts

or

itect's busin

r time; it's not settled.' And finally, as he gave his mother a little ki

'50, Professor Astier, after brilliant successes at the Institute, sued for the hand of Mademoiselle Adelaide Réhu, who at that time lived with her grandfather at the Palais Mazarin, it was not the delicate and slender beauty of his betrothed, it was not the bloom of her 'Aurora' face, which were the real attractions for him. Neither was it he

nd the long solemn corridors into which at intervals there descended a dusty staircase, were for him rather the path of glory than of love. The Paulin Réhu of the Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

deity. As for Madame Astier, who had only accepted marriage as a means of escape from a hard and selfish grandfather in his anecdotage, it had not taken her long to find out how poor was the laborious peasant brain, how narrow the intelligence, concealed by the solemn manners of the Academic laureate and manufacturer of octavos, and by his voice with its

Ecole Normale to a professorship. Alas! at school Paul took prizes for nothing but gymnastics and fencing, and distinguished himself chiefly by a wilful and obstinate perversity, which covered a practical turn of mind and a precocious understanding of the world. Careful of his dress and his appearance, he never went for a walk without the hope, of which he made no secret to his schoolfellows, of 'picking up a rich wif

te for the Prix de Rome. The father could scarcely speak for indignation. 'Wretched boy! It is the Prix de Rome! You cannot know; you do not understand. The Prix de Rome! Get that, and it means the Institute!' Little the young man cared. What he wanted was wealth, and wealth

e way of nails and hinges as might have sufficed for a church door, and high enough and deep enough to have held the enormous manuscript of 'Marcus Aurelius' together with all the dreams of glory and all the ambitious hopes of an historian on the high road to the Académie. It was

eglected, which he succeeded in restoring with a skill and ingenuity really amazing in an undistinguished scholar of the Beaux-Arts. Mousseaux got him the order for the new mansion of the Ambassador of the Porte; and finally the Princess of Rosen commissioned him to design the mausoleum of Prince Herbert of Rosen, who had come to a tragic end in the expedition of Christian of Illyria. The young man now thought himse

ny more; and all that the mother could attempt or say for her darling son failed to shake this irrevocable decision. Her will, which had hitherto swayed the establishment, was now resisted. Thenceforward there was a continual struggle. The mother used her ingenuity to make little dishonest profits on the household expenses, th

k it. There she found her husband already at table, looking preoccupied and almost grumpy. In the ordinary way 'the Master' came to his meals with a smiling serenity as regular as his appet

hich her husband never failed to welcome her 'Wednesday' costume, shabby as it was. Reckoning that this bad temper would go off with the first mouthfuls, she waited before begin

llowed a domestic scene; on all which Corentine reckoned when she threw in her artful speech. To-day, however, it was all-important that the master should not be irritated, but prepared by skilful stages for the intended petition. He was talked to, for instance, about the health of Loisillon, the perpetual secretary of the Académie, who, it seemed, was getting worse and worse. Loisillon's post and his rooms in the Institute were to come to Léonard Astier as a compensation for the office which he had lost; and though he was really attached to his dying colleague, still th

did not move

e provisional is the only thing that lasts. Loisillon has been dying any time this ten years. He'll see every one of us buried yet-ev

side at the meeting and to deliver the opening speech, in which his Highness was to receive a compliment. Skilfully questioned about this speech, which he was already planning, Léonard described it in outline. It was to be a crushing attack upon the modern school of literature-a soun

my uniform coat? Has it been seen to? The la

irst? Why, it was as long ago-as long ago-as when he was admitted! The twelfth of October, eighteen-sixty-six! He had better order a new one for the Meeting. The five Académies, a Royal Highness, and all Paris! Such an

ves ridiculous with their economy. There were too many shabby old things about them. The furniture of her

shut up. Many a time had he supplied the means to pay a milliner's bill, or a dressmaker's, or to re-paper the walls, and after all no account had been settled and no purchase made. All the money had gone to th

ng up, Master Hedgehog. I know the meaning of that. "Nothing to be got! nothing to be got! No, no, no!" Eh?' The back grew rounder and rounder. 'But you can find money for M. Fage.' Astier started, sat up, and looked uneasily at his wife. Mone

tly she knew nothing; it

ortune. 'Yes, madam, a fortune.' He grew excited, and began to quote figures, the offers that had been made him. Bos, the famous Bos of the Rue de l'Abbaye (and he knew his business

e used sometimes to speak to her of his finds, and she listened in a wandering absent-minded way, as a woman does listen to a man's voice wh

ike an explosi

take aspects unknown to those who know them best The next minute the Academician was quite calm, again, and was explaining, not without embarrassment, that these documents were indispensable to him as an author, especially now that he could not command the Records of the Foreign Office. To sell these materials would be to give u

ut mean

I have no mansion, I keep no horses and no English cart. The tramway does for my going and coming, and I am content to live on a third floor over an entresol, where I am exposed to Teyssèdre. I work night and day, I pile up volume after volume, two and three octavos

other was struck by his tone, and in her look, as she glanced sidelong, almost wick

as he spoke, and flinging his table napkin upo

astily on her apron, she laid a card on the edge of the table. Madame Astier looked at it. 'The Vicomte de Freydet.' A gleam

bout hi

I have not even cut i

n her glass while her husband in an absent-minded way gave her some idea of the

y are so nice, he and his sister, and he is so good

o him to be really improving. 'If he asks you for my personal opinion, it is this: there is still a little to

and more absorbed in thought, lingered for some minutes, breaking up with his knife what remained in his plate of the Auvergne cheese; then, being disturbed in his meditations by Corentine, who, without heeding him, was rapidly clea