“It is certainly under such conditions that the Academy selects its candidates,” said la Peyrade.  “What is your master’s name?”

“Pere Picot; he is never called otherwise in our quarter; sometimes he goes out into the streets as if dressed for the carnival, and all the little children crowd about him, calling out:  ’How d’ye do, Pere Picot!  Good-morning, Pere Picot!’ But that’s how it is; he takes no care of his dignity; he goes about full of his own ideas; and though I kill myself trying to give him appetizing food, if you ask him what he has had for his dinner he can’t tell you.  Yet he’s a man full of ability, and he has taught good pupils.  Perhaps monsieur knows young Phellion, a professor in the College of Saint-Louis; he was one of his scholars, and he comes to see him very often.”

“Then,” said la Peyrade, “your master is a mathematician?”

“Yes, monsieur; mathematics have been his bane; they have flung him into a set of ideas which don’t seem to have any common-sense in them ever since he has been employed at the Observatory, near here.”

“Well,” said la Peyrade, “you must bring testimony proving your long devotion to this old man, and I will then draw up a memorial to the Academy and take the necessary steps to present it.”

“How good monsieur is!” said the pious woman, clasping her hands; “and if he would also let me tell him of a little difficulty—­”

“What is it?”

“They tell me, monsieur, that to get this prize persons must be really very poor.”

“Not exactly; still, the Academy does endeavor to choose whose who are in straitened circumstances, and who have made sacrifices too heavy for their means.”

“Sacrifices!  I think I may indeed say I have made sacrifices, for the little property I inherited from my parents has all been spent in keeping the old man, and for fifteen years I have had no wages, which, at three hundred francs a year and compound interest, amount now to a pretty little sum; as monsieur, I am sure, will agree.”

At the words “compound interest,” which evidenced a certain amount of financial culture, la Peyrade looked at this Antigone with increased attention.

“In short,” he said, “your difficulty is—­”

“Monsieur will not think it strange,” replied the saintly person, “that a very rich uncle dying in England, who had never done anything for his family in his lifetime, should have left me twenty-five thousand francs.”

“Certainly,” said the barrister, “there’s nothing in that but what is perfectly natural and proper.”

“But, monsieur, I have been told that the possession of this money will prevent the judges from considering my claims to the prize.”

“Possibly; because seeing you in possession of a little competence, the sacrifices which you apparently intend to continue in favor of your master will be less meritorious.”

“I shall never abandon him, poor, dear man, in spite of his faults, though I know that this poor little legacy which Heaven has given me is in the greatest danger from him.”