Everybody present thought the old mathematician’s monomania quite delightful, except la Peyrade, who now, in perceiving Felix Phellion’s part in the affair, regretted deeply having caused the explanation.

“And yet, Monsieur Picot,” said Minard, “if Felix Phellion is only guilty of attributing his discovery to you, it seems to me that his indiscreet behavior has resulted in a certain compensation to you:  the cross of the Legion of honor, a pension, and the glory attached to your name are not to be despised.”

“The cross and the pension I take,” said the old man, emptying his glass, which, to Brigitte’s terror, he set down upon the table with a force that threatened to smash it.  “The government has owed them to me these twenty years; not for the discovery of stars,—­things that I have always despised,—­but for my famous ’Treatise on Differential Logarithms’ (Kepler thought proper to call them monologarithms), which is a sequel to the tables of Napier; also for my ‘Postulatum’ of Euclid, of which I was the first to discover the solution; but above all, for my ’Theory of Perpetual Motion,’—­four volumes in quarto with plates; Paris, 1825.  You see, therefore, monsieur, that to give me glory is bringing water to the Seine.  I had so little need of Monsieur Felix Phellion to make me a position in the scientific world that I turned him out of my house long ago.”

“Then it isn’t the first star,” said Colleville, flippantly, “that he dared to put upon you?”

“He did worse than that,” roared the old man; “he ruined my reputation, he tarnished my name.  My ‘Theory of Perpetual Motion,’ the printing of which cost me every penny I owned, though it ought to have been printed gratis at the Royal Printing-office, was calculated to make my fortune and render me immortal.  Well, that miserable Felix prevented it.  From time to time, pretending to bring messages from my editor, he would say, the young sycophant, ’Papa Picot, your book is selling finely; here’s five hundred francs—­two hundred francs—­and once it was two thousand—­which your publisher charged me to give you.’  This thing went on for years, and my publisher, who had the baseness to enter into the plot, would say to me, when I went to the shop:  ’Yes, yes, it doesn’t do badly, it bubbles, that book; we shall soon be at the end of this edition.’  I, who didn’t suggest anything, I pocketed my money, and thought to myself:  ’My book is liked, little by little its ideas are making their way; I may now expect, from day to day, that some great capitalist will come to me and propose to apply my system—­’”

“—­of ’Absorption of Liquids’?” asked Colleville, who had been steadily filling the old fellow’s glass.