“Then,” said Madame de la Chanterie, after reflecting for a time, “listen to me, for I have important things to tell.  You have been allured, my child, by the poesy of misfortune.  Yes, misfortunes are often poetical; for, as I think, poesy is a certain effect on the sensibilities, and sorrows affect the sensibilities,—­life is so intense in grief!”

“Yes, madame, I know that I have been gripped by the demon of curiosity.  But how could I help it?  I have not yet acquired the habit of penetrating to the heart of these great misfortunes; I cannot go among them with the calmness of your three soldiers of the Lord.  But, let me tell you, it is since I have recovered from that first excitement that I have chiefly longed to devote myself to your work.”

“Listen to me, my dear angel!” said Madame de la Chanterie, who uttered the last three words with a gentle solemnity that touched the young man strangely.  “We have forbidden ourselves absolutely,—­and we do not trifle with words here; what is forbidden no longer occupies our minds,—­we have forbidden ourselves to enter into any speculations.  To print a book for sale on the chance of profit is a matter of business, and any operation of that kind would throw us into all the entanglements of commerce.  Certainly your scheme seems to me feasible,—­even necessary.  But do you think it is the first that has offered itself?  A score of times, a hundred times, we have come upon just such ways of saving families, or firms.  What would have become of us if we had taken part in such affairs?  We should be merchants.  No, our true partnership with misfortune is not to take the work into our own hands, but to help the unfortunate to work themselves.  Before long you will meet with misfortunes more bitter still than these.  Would you then do the same thing,—­that is, take the burdens of those unfortunates wholly on yourself?  You would soon be overwhelmed.  Reflect, too, my dear child, that for the last year even the Messieurs Mongenod find our accounts too heavy for them.  Half your time would be taken up in merely keeping our books.  We have to-day over two thousand debtors in Paris, and we must keep the record of their debts.  Not that we ask for payment; we simply wait.  We calculate that if half the money we expect is lost, the other half comes back to us, sometimes doubled.  Now, suppose your Monsieur Bernard dies, the twelve thousand francs are probably lost.  But if you cure his daughter, if his grandson is put in the way of succeeding, if he comes, some day, a magistrate, then, when the family is prosperous, they will remember the debt, and return the money of the poor with usury.  Do you know that more than one family whom we have rescued from poverty, and put upon their feet on the road to prosperity by loans of money without interest, have laid aside a portion for the poor, and have returned to us the money loaned doubled, and sometimes tripled?  Those are our only speculations.  Moreover, reflect