“I did not like to deprive you of it to-night.”

“God grant,” she said, smiling, as she looked at the magnificent volume, “that this may be your last excess of elegance.”

Looking at the clothes of the four men present and observing how in every particular they were reduced to mere utility and neatness, and seeing, too, how rigorously the same principle was applied to all the details of the house, Godefroid understood the value of the reproach so courteously made to him.

“Madame,” he said, “the persons whom you obliged this morning are scoundrels; I overheard, without intending it, what they said to each other when they left the house; it was full of the basest ingratitude.”

“They were the two locksmiths of the rue Mouffetard,” said Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas; “that is your affair.”

“The fish gets away more than once before it is caught,” said Monsieur Alain, laughing.

The perfect indifference of Madame de la Chanterie on hearing of the immediate ingratitude of persons to whom she had, no doubt, given money, surprised Godefroid, who became thoughtful.

The dinner was enlivened by Monsieur Alain and Monsieur Joseph; but Monsieur Nicolas remained quiet, sad, and cold; he bore on his features the ineffaceable imprint of some bitter grief, some eternal sorrow.  Madame de la Chanterie paid equal attentions to all.  Godefroid felt himself observed by these persons, whose prudence equalled their piety; his vanity led him to imitate their reserve, and he measured his words.

This first day was much more interesting than those which succeeded it.  Godefroid, who found himself set aside from all the serious conferences, was obliged, during several hours in mornings and evenings when he was left wholly to himself, to have recourse to the “Imitation of Jesus Christ;” and he ended by studying that book as a man studies a book when he has but one, or is a prisoner.  A book is then like a woman with whom we live in solitude; we must either hate or adore that woman, and, in like manner, we must either enter into the soul of the author or not read ten lines of his book.

Now, it is impossible not to be impressed by the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” which is to dogma what action is to thought.  Catholicism vibrates in it, pulses, breathes, and lives, body to body, with human life.  The book is a sure friend.  It speaks to all passions, all difficulties, even worldly ones; it solves all problems; it is more eloquent than any preacher, for its voice is your own, it is the voice within your soul, you hear it with your spirit.  It is, in short, the Gospel translated, adapted to all ages, the summit and crest of all human situations.  It is extraordinary that the Church has never canonized John Gersen, for the Divine Spirit evidently inspired his pen.

For Godefroid, the hotel de la Chanterie now held a woman and a book; day by day he loved the woman more; he discovered flowers buried beneath the snows of winter in her heart; he had glimpses of the joys of a sacred friendship which religion permits, on which the angels smile; a friendship which here united these five persons and against which no evil could prevail.