“So be it,” said M. de Vermondans, who, in spite of his eclecticism in politics, had, with a strange mental contradiction, preserved in relation to certain things very deeply rooted ideas, “So be it.  In my time people took up no such fancies—­more than one emigre passed ten years of his life in a foreign country, and never learned to speak its language.  The young men of our times are not like those of to-day.  The world, which when I knew it was so gay and careless, which from its very recklessness and its choleric daring was so interesting, now looks to me like a vast school.  Its atmosphere, formerly impregnated with perfumes, is now saturated with the atmosphere of dusty tomes and damp newspapers.  We meet with no one but persons anxious either to teach or learn.  What will become of us if we give way to this pedantic pride?  If we surrender to this anxiety to analyze everything?  If we go on so, to suit us, God will be compelled to make a new world, to give occupation to the lofty fancies of naturalists and physical philosophers, who seem to me to have weighed and examined this thoroughly.

“Bah! bah!  Mademoiselle the philosopher,” said M. de Vermondans, as he saw Ebba smile, “I am not ignorant that just now I talk very much like a heretic.  You have delighted in reading a multitude of books.  I excuse you, however, because you never boast of your acquisitions.

“You do not belong to those blue-stockings, and I have met many such, who, as soon as you approach them, throw at your head the name of a poet like a bomb-shell, and exhibit the wealth of their arsenal by firing a philosophical cannon, or algebraic chain shot.

“May God almighty keep me from those women who forget in this manner the natural graces of their sex.  Let him protect me from those Laureates who can see no natural phenomenon without crying out with stupid satisfaction, ‘I know the reason.’

“Imagine how delighted I should be, if when enjoying the delicious luxury of sunset, some bachelor of arts should say—­

“’Monsieur, will you suffer me to explain how various clouds assume the colors which so vividly impress you, and with what rapidity light comes to the eye?’

“For heaven’s sake let me enjoy in peace all the gifts of Providence, admire its works in the innocence of my heart, and discover by what geometrical process God has regulated the form of the globe, and to what pallet, to use the painter’s phrase, he has ground his colors.”

“There you express a pious and respectable sentiment, which, however, permit me to say, cannot be admitted without some qualification.  We must not forget that the greatest gift with which God has endowed man is intelligence, and that one of our first duties is to attempt to develop that intelligence by means of every faculty and all the means of application with which he has endowed us.”