"And, above all, take care of yourself." "Trust me, Count." And the secret agent departed, to appear again in these chambers only when his work was done.
"A strange man," mused the minister when he was alone.

"A still stranger business for a genuine scholar.

Is he really poor?
Does he do this work to afford him ease and time for his studies?
Or, better still, does he hide a great and singular patriotism under butterfly wings?
Patriotism?
More and more it becomes self-interest.

It is only when a foreign mob starts to tear down your house, that you become a patriot." Now the subject of these desultory musings went directly to the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The study he pursued was of deep interest to him; it concerned a butterfly of vast proportions and kaleidoscopic in color, long ago pinned away and labeled among others of lesser brilliancy.