For the third time Godefroid entered Monsieur Alain’s room, just as the old man was beginning his evening reading of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ.”  This time the kindly soul did not restrain a smile when he saw the young man, and he said at once, without allowing Godefroid to speak:—­

“Why do you come to me, my dear boy; why not go to Madame?  I am the most ignorant, the most imperfect, the least spiritual of our number.  For the last three days,” he added, with a shrewd little glance, “Madame and my other friends have read your heart.”

“What have they read there?” asked Godefroid.

“Ah!” replied the goodman, without evasion, “they see in you a rather artless desire to belong to our little flock.  But this sentiment is not yet an ardent vocation.  Yes,” he continued, replying to a gesture of Godefroid’s, “you have more curiosity than fervor.  You are not yet so detached from your old ideas that you do not look forward to something adventurous, romantic, as they say, in the incidents of our life.”

Godefroid could not keep himself from blushing.

“You see a likeness between our occupations and those of the caliphs of the ‘Arabian Nights;’ and you are thinking about the satisfaction you will have in playing the part of the good genii in the tales of benevolence you are inventing.  Ah, my dear boy! that shame-faced laugh of yours proves to me that we were quite right in that conjecture.  How do you expect to conceal any feeling from persons whose business it is to divine the most hidden motion of souls, the tricks of poverty, the calculations of indigence,—­honest spies, the police of the good God; old judges, whose code contains nothing but absolutions; doctors of suffering, whose only remedy is oftentimes the wise application of money?  But, you see, my child, we don’t wish to quarrel with the motives which bring us a neophyte, provided he will really stay and become a brother of the order.  We shall judge you by your work.  There are two kinds of curiosity,—­that of good and that of evil; just at this moment you have that of good.  If you should work in our vineyard, the juice of our grapes will make you perpetually thirsty for the divine fruit.  The initiation is, as in that of all natural knowledge, easy in appearance, difficult in reality.  Benevolence is like poesy; nothing is easier than to catch the appearance of it.  But here, as in Parnassus, nothing contents us but perfection.  To become one to us, you must acquire a great knowledge of life.  And what a life,—­good God!  Parisian life, which defies the sagacity of the minister of police and all his agents!  We have to circumvent the perpetual conspiracy of Evil, master it in all its forms, while it changes so often as to seem infinite.  Charity in Paris must know as much as vice, just as a policeman must know all the tricks of thieves.  We must each be frank and each distrustful; we must have quick perception and a sure and rapid judgment.