“I wish they had never been put into my custody,” said M. Grandissime.

Some new thought moved him to draw his chair closer.

“Mr. Frowenfeld, those two ladies whom you went to see the other evening—­”

His listener started a little: 

“Yes.”

“Did they ever tell you their history?”

“No, sir; but I have heard it.”

“And you think they have been deeply wronged, eh?  Come, Mr. Frowenfeld, take right hold of the acacia-bush.”  M. Grandissime did not smile.

Frowenfeld winced.  “I think they have.”

“And you think restitution should be made them, no doubt, eh?”

“I do.”

“At any cost?”

The questioner showed a faint, unpleasant smile, that stirred something like opposition in the breast of the apothecary.

“Yes,” he answered.

The next question had a tincture even of fierceness: 

“You think it right to sink fifty or a hundred people into poverty to lift one or two out?”

“Mr. Grandissime,” said Frowenfeld, slowly, “you bade me study this community.”

“I adv—­yes; what is it you find?”

“I find—­it may be the same with other communities, I suppose it is, more or less—­that just upon the culmination of the moral issue it turns and asks the question which is behind it, instead of the question which is before it.”

“And what is the question before me?”

“I know it only in the abstract.”

“Well?”

The apothecary looked distressed.

“You should not make me say it,” he objected.

“Nevertheless,” said the Creole, “I take that liberty.”

“Well, then,” said Frowenfeld, “the question behind is Expediency and the question in front, Divine Justice.  You are asking yourself—­”

He checked himself.

“Which I ought to regard,” said M. Grandissime, quickly.  “Expediency, of course, and be like the rest of mankind.”  He put on a look of bitter humor.  “It is all easy enough for you, Mr. Frowenfeld, my-de’-seh; you have the easy part—­the theorizing.”

He saw the ungenerousness of his speech as soon as it was uttered, yet he did not modify it.

“True, Mr. Grandissime,” said Frowenfeld; and after a pause—­“but you have the noble part—­the doing.”

“Ah, my-de’-seh!” exclaimed Honore; “the noble part!  There is the bitterness of the draught!  The opportunity to act is pushed upon me, but the opportunity to act nobly has passed by.”

He again drew his chair closer, glanced behind him and spoke low: