But she adhered silently to her opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity in the Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy with his distress.

'Do not mind,' she would say; 'I, too, am not at all clever, and I can assure you that it makes no difference in life.' The Doctor's view was naturally different.

That gentleman never wearied of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeable enough to hear.

He now had a listener, who was not so cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections.

Besides, was he not educating the boy?
And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties.
What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State?
Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness.