“I do not think so,” said Therese.  “He recognizes that one mind is impenetrable to another mind, and he suffers from this.  He feels that he is alone when he is thinking, alone when he is writing.  Whatever one may do, one is always alone in the world.  That is what he wishes to say.  He is right.  You may always explain:  you never are understood.”

“There are signs—­” said Paul Vence.

“Don’t you think, Monsieur Vence, that signs also are a form of hieroglyphics?  Give me news of Monsieur Choulette.  I do not see him any more.”

Vence replied that Choulette was very busy in forming the Third Order of Saint Francis.

“The idea, Madame, came to him in a marvellous fashion one day when he had gone to call on his Maria in the street where she lives, behind the public hospital—­a street always damp, the houses on which are tottering.  You must know that he considers Maria the saint and martyr who is responsible for the sins of the people.

“He pulled the bell-rope, made greasy by two centuries of visitors.  Either because the martyr was at the wine-shop, where she is familiarly known, or because she was busy in her room, she did not open the door.  Choulette rang for a long time, and so violently that the bellrope remained in his hand.  Skilful at understanding symbols and the hidden meaning of things, he understood at once that this rope had not been detached without the permission of spiritual powers.  He made of it a belt, and realized that he had been chosen to lead back into its primitive purity the Third Order of Saint Francis.  He renounced the beauty of women, the delights of poetry, the brightness of glory, and studied the life and the doctrine of Saint Francis.  However, he has sold to his editor a book entitled ‘Les Blandices’, which contains, he says, the description of all sorts of loves.  He flatters himself that in it he has shown himself a criminal with some elegance.  But far from harming his mystic undertakings, this book favors them in this sense, that, corrected by his later work, he will become honest and exemplary; and the gold that he has received in payment, which would not have been paid to him for a more chaste volume, will serve for a pilgrimage to Assisi.”

Madame Martin asked how much of this story was really true.  Vence replied that she must not try to learn.

He confessed that he was the idealist historian of the poet, and that the adventures which he related of him were not to be taken in the literal and Judaic sense.

He affirmed that at least Choulette was publishing Les Blandices, and desired to visit the cell and the grave of St. Francis.

“Then,” exclaimed Madame Martin, “I will take him to Italy with me.  Find him, Monsieur Vence, and bring him to me.  I am going next week.”

M. Martin then excused himself, not being able to remain longer.  He had to finish a report which was to be laid before the Chamber the next day.