Madame Pron, nee Barniol, arrived with two school-girls, aged seventeen, confided to her maternal care by families residing in Martinique.  Monsieur Pron, professor of rhetoric in a college presided over by priests, belonged to the Phellion class; but, instead of expanding on the surface in phrases and demonstrations, and posing as an example, he was dry and sententious.  Monsieur and Madame Pron, the flowers of the Phellion salon, received every Monday.  Though a professor, the little man danced.  He enjoyed great influence in the quarter enclosed by the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, the Luxembourg, and the rue de Sevres.  Therefore, as soon as Phellion saw his friend, he took him by the arm into a corner to inform him of the Thuillier candidacy.  After ten minutes’ consultation they both went to find Thuillier, and the recess of a window, opposite to that where Flavie still sat absorbed in her reflections, no doubt, heard a “trio” worthy, in its way, of that of the Swiss in “Guillaume Tell.”

“Do you see,” said Theodose, returning to Flavie, “the pure and honest Phellion intriguing over there?  Give a personal reason to a virtuous man and he’ll paddle in the slimiest puddle; he is hooking that little Pron, and Pron is taking it all in, solely to get your little Celeste for Felix Phellion.  Separate them, and in ten minutes they’ll get together again, and that young Minard will be growling round them like an angry bulldog.”

Felix, still under the strong emotion imparted to him by Celeste’s generous action and the cry that came from the girl’s heart, though no one but Madame Thuillier still thought of it, became inspired by one of those ingenuous artfulnesses which are the honest charlatanism of true love; but he was not to the manner born of it, and mathematics, moreover, made him somewhat absent-minded.  He stationed himself near Madame Thuillier, imagining that Madame Thuillier would attract Celeste to her side.  This astute calculation succeeded all the better because young Minard, who saw in Celeste nothing more than a “dot,” had no such sudden inspiration, and was drinking his coffee and talking politics with Laudigeois, Monsieur Barniol, and Dutocq by order of his father, who was thinking and planning for the general election of the legislature in 1842.

“Who wouldn’t love Celeste?” said Felix to Madame Thuillier.

“Little darling, no one in the world loves me as she does,” replied the poor slave, with difficulty restraining her tears.

“Ah! madame, we both love you,” said the candid professor, sincerely.

“What are you saying to each other?” asked Celeste, coming up.

“My child,” said the pious woman, drawing her god-daughter down to her and kissing her on the forehead.  “He said that you both loved me.”

“Do not be angry with my presumption, mademoiselle.  Let me do all I can to prove it,” murmured Felix.  “Ah!  I cannot help it, I was made this way; injustice revolts me to the soul!  Yes, the Saviour of men was right to promise the future to the meek heart, to the slain lamb!  A man who did not love you, Celeste, must have adored you after that sublime impulse of yours at table.  Ah, yes! innocence alone can console the martyr.  You are a kind young girl; you will be one of those wives who make the glory and the happiness of a family.  Happy be he whom you will choose!”