La Peyrade had seen, as he passed the door of the salon, Celeste and Felix Phellion in close conversation.  Flavie had such confidence in her daughter that she did not fear to leave them together.  Now that the great success of the morning was secured, Theodose felt the necessity of beginning his courtship of Celeste.  It was high time, he thought, to bring about a quarrel between the lovers.  He did not, therefore, hesitate to apply his ear to the door of the salon before entering it, in order to discover what letters of the alphabet of love they were spelling; he was even invited to commit this domestic treachery by sounds from within, which seemed to say that they were disputing.  Love, according to one of our poets, is a privilege which two persons mutually take advantage of to cause each other, reciprocally, a great deal of sorrow about nothing at all.

When Celeste knew that Felix was elected by her heart to be the companion of her life, she felt a desire, not so much to study him as to unite herself closely with him by that communion of souls which is the basis of all affections, and leads, in youthful minds, to involuntary examination.  The dispute to which Theodose was now to listen took its rise in a disagreement which had sprung up within the last few days between the mathematician and Celeste.  The young girl’s piety was real; she belonged to the flock of the truly faithful, and to her, Catholicism, tempered by that mysticism which attracts young souls, was an inward poem, a life within her life.  From this point young girls are apt to develop into either extremely high-minded women or saints.  But, during this beautiful period of their youth they have in their heart, in their ideas, a sort of absolutism:  before their eyes is the image of perfection, and all must be celestial, angelic, or divine to satisfy them.  Outside of their ideal, nothing of good can exist; all is stained and soiled.  This idea causes the rejection of many a diamond with a flaw by girls who, as women, fall in love with paste.

Now, Celeste had seen in Felix, not irreligion, but indifference to matters of religion.  Like most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great naturalists, he had subjected religion to reason; he recognized a problem in it as insoluble as the squaring of the circle.  Deist “in petto,” he lived in the religion of most Frenchmen, not attaching more importance to it than he did to the new laws promulgated in July.  It was necessary to have a God in heaven, just as they set up a bust of the king at the mayor’s office.  Felix Phellion, a worthy son of his father, had never drawn the slightest veil over his opinions or his conscience; he allowed Celeste to read into them with the candor and the inattention of a student of problems.  The young girl, on her side, professed a horror for atheism, and her conscience assured her that a deist was cousin-germain to an atheist.

“Have you thought, Felix, of doing what you promised me?” asked Celeste, as soon as Madame Colleville had left them alone.