He snatched his cap from the table, and with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open and disappeared.
The scholar smiled as he looked after him.

"A foolish young man," he said, "who will assuredly, if he be not stayed, end unfortunate.

It is the way of Frenchmen, Messer Blondel.

They act without method and strike without intention, bear into age the follies of youth, and wear the gravity neither of the north nor of the south.

But that reminds me," he continued, speaking low and bending towards the other with a look of sympathy--"you are better, I hope ?" The words were harmless, but they conveyed more than their surface meaning, and they touched the Syndic to the quick.