As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his child.  She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks.

Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the chemist, with whom everything was prospering.  Napoleon helped him in the laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras’ table in a breath.  He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men.

Not so!  A secret ambition devoured him.  Homais hankered after the cross of the Legion of Honour.  He had plenty of claims to it.

“First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense, various works of public utility, such as” (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, “Cider, its manufacture and effects,” besides observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); “without counting that I am a member of several learned societies” (he was member of a single one).

“In short!” he cried, making a pirouette, “if it were only for distinguishing myself at fires!”

Then Homais inclined towards the Government.  He secretly did the prefect great service during the elections.  He sold himself—­in a word, prostituted himself.  He even addressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored him to “do him justice”; he called him “our good king,” and compared him to Henri IV.

And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his nomination were in it.  It was never there.  At last, unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband.  He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.

From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used.  One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring.  All Leon’s letters were there.  There could be no doubt this time.  He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad.  He found a box and broke it open with a kick.  Rodolphe’s portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.

People wondered at his despondency.  He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients.  Then they said “he shut himself up to drink.”

Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down.