“Well, you see, old man, it is easy enough to catch their sous.  Say what they want you to say, that’s all.”

“But we owe money.”

“To whom?”

“To that lady—­”

“I’d like to see that old body try to get it; I’d—­”

“You’d pay her.”

“Well, you’re right, for if I paid her I’d get more another time.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do as they advise, and build up a good business?”

“Pooh!”

“But she said she would get some one to lend us the money.”

“Then we should have to give up the life of—­”

“Well, I’d rather; I’m sick of it; it isn’t being a man at all to be drunk half one’s time.”

“Yes, but you know the abbe turned his back on old Marin the other day; he refused him everything.”

“Because old Marin tried to swindle, and nobody can succeed in that but millionnaires.”

Just then the two men, whose dress seemed to show that they were foremen in some workshop, turned abruptly round towards the place Maubert by the bridge of the Hotel-Dieu.  Godefroid stepped aside to let them pass.  Seeing him so close behind them they looked rather anxiously at each other, and their faces expressed a regret for having spoken.

Godefroid was the more interested by this conversation because it reminded him of the scene between the Abbe de Veze and the workman the day of his first visit.

Thinking over this circumstance, he went as far as a bookseller’s in the rue Saint-Jacques, whence he returned with a very handsome copy of the finest edition published in France of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.”  Walking slowly back, in order that he might arrive exactly at the dinner hour, he recalled his own sensations during this morning and he was conscious of a new impulse in his soul.  He was seized by a sudden and deep curiosity, but his curiosity paled before an inexplicable desire.  He was drawn to Madame de la Chanterie; he felt the keenest desire to attach himself to her, to devote himself to her, to please her, to deserve her praise:  in short, he felt the first emotions of platonic love; he saw glimpses of the untold grandeur of that soul, and he longed to know it in its entirety.  He grew impatient to enter the inner lives of these pure Catholics.  In that small company of faithful souls, the majesty of practical religion was so thoroughly blended with all that is most majestic in a French woman that Godefroid resolved to leave no stone unturned to make himself accepted as a true member of the little body.  These feelings would have been unnaturally sudden in a busy Parisian eagerly occupied with life, but Godefroid was, as we have seen, in the position of a drowning man who catches at every floating branch thinking it a solid stay, and his soul, ploughed and furrowed with trial, was ready to receive all seed.

He found the four friends in the salon, and he presented the book to Madame de la Chanterie, saying: