Josephine took no notice of her.  She sat like one turned to stone looking far away over her mother’s head with rigid eyes fixed on the air and on coming horrors.

Rose felt her arm seized.  It was Aubertin.  He too was pale now, though not before.  He spoke in a terrible whisper to Rose, his eye fixed on the woman of stone that sat there.

“Is this joy?”

Rose, by a mighty effort, raised her eyes and confronted his full.  “What else should it be?” said she.

And with these words this Spartan girl was her sister’s champion once more against all comers, friend or foe.

CHAPTER XVI.

Dr. Aubertin received one day a note from a publishing bookseller, to inquire whether he still thought of giving the world his valuable work on insects.  The doctor was amazed.  “My valuable work!  Why, Rose, they all refused it, and this person in particular recoiled from it as if my insects could sting on paper.”

The above led to a correspondence, in which the convert to insects explained that the work must be published at the author’s expense, the publisher contenting himself with the profits.  The author, thirsting for the public, consented.  Then the publisher wrote again to say that the immortal treatise must be spiced; a little politics flung in:  “Nothing goes down, else.”  The author answered in some heat that he would not dilute things everlasting with the fleeting topics of the day, nor defile science with politics.  On this his Mentor smoothed him down, despising him secretly for not seeing that a book is a matter of trade and nothing else.  It ended in Aubertin going to Paris to hatch his Phoenix.  He had not been there a week, when a small deputation called on him, and informed him he had been elected honorary member of a certain scientific society.  The compliment was followed by others, till at last certain ladies, with the pliancy of their sex, find out they had always secretly cared for butterflies.  Then the naturalist smelt a rat, or, in other words, began to scent that entomology, a form of idiocy in a poor man, is a graceful decoration of the intellect in a rich one.

Philosopher without bile, he saw through this, and let it amuse, not shock him.  His own species, a singularly interesting one in my opinion, had another trait in reserve for him.

He took a world of trouble to find out the circumstances of his nephew’s nephews and nieces:  then he made arrangements for distributing a large part of his legacy among them.  His intentions and the proportions of his generosity transpired.

Hitherto they had been silent, but now they all fell-to and abused him:  each looking only to the amount of his individual share, not at the sum total the doctor was giving way to an ungrateful lot.

The donor was greatly amused, and noted down the incident and some of the remarks in his commonplace book, under the general head of “Bestiarium;” and the particular head of “Homo.”