“He’ll rate you finely,” said Minard, laughing.  “I never saw anything so comical as his wrath last night.”

Felix, as he read the letter, smiled to himself.  When he had finished it, he passed it to his father, saying:—­

“Read it aloud if you like.”

Whereupon, with his solemn voice and manner, Phellion read as follows:—­

My dear Felix,—­I have just received your note; it came in the nick of time, for I was, as they say, in a fury with you.  You tell me that you were guilty of that abuse of confidence (about which I intended to write you a piece of my mind) in order to give a knock-down blow to my relations by proving that a man capable of making such complicated calculations as your discovery required was not a man to put in a lunatic asylum or drag before a judiciary council.  That argument pleases me, and it makes such a good answer to the infamous proceedings of my relations that I praise you for having had the idea.  But you sold it to me, that argument, pretty dear when you put me in company with a star, for you know very well that propinquity wouldn’t please me at all.  It is not at my age, and after solving the great problem of perpetual motion, that a man could take up with such rubbish as that,—­good only for boys and greenhorns like you; and that is what I have taken the liberty this morning to go and tell the minister of public instruction, by whom I must say I was received with the most perfect urbanity.  I asked him to see whether, as he had made a mistake and sent them to the wrong address, he could not take back his cross and his pension,—­though to be sure, as I told him, I deserved them for other things.

“The government,” he replied, “is not in the habit of making mistakes; what it does is always properly done, and it never annuls an ordinance signed by the hand of his Majesty.  Your great labors have deserved the two favors the King has granted you; it is a long-standing debt, which I am happy to pay off in his name.”

  “But Felix?” I said; “because after all for a young man it is not
  such a bad discovery.”

“Monsieur Felix Phellion,” replied the minister, “will receive in the course of the day his appointment to the rank of Chevalier of the Legion of honor; I will have it signed this morning by the king.  Moreover, there is a vacant place at the Academy of Sciences, and if you are not a candidate for it—­”

“I, in the Academy!” I interrupted, with the frankness of speech you know I always use; “I execrate academies; they are stiflers, extinguishers, assemblages of sloths, idlers, shops with big signs and nothing to sell inside—­”

“Well, then,” said the minister, smiling, “I think that at the next election Monsieur Felix Phellion will have every chance, and among those chances I count the influence of the government which is secured to him.”