He has in the press a treatise which will revolutionize the law of mortgages; he has been working twenty years at it; a masterpiece, I assure you." Day follows day; no book appears, no treatise is published, and all the while M.Flamaran grows in reputation.

Strange phenomenon! like the aloe in the Botanical Gardens.
The blossoming of the aloe is an event.

"Only think!" says the gaping public, "a flower which has taken twenty springs, twenty summers, twenty autumns, and twenty winters to make up its mind to open!" And meanwhile the roses bloom unnoticed by the town.

But M.Flamaran's case is still more strange.

Every year it is whispered that he is about to bloom afresh; he never does bloom; and his reputation flourishes none the less.