“By name.”

At last he put the note-book back on its shelf, and deigned to remember that I had come about the Junian Latins.

“In which of the authorities do you find a difficulty?”

“My difficulty lies in the want of authorities, sir, I wish to find out whether the Junian Latins had not a special dress.”

“To be sure.”  He scratched his head.  “Gaius says nothing on the point?”

“No.”

“Papinian?”

“No.”

“Justinian?”

“No.”

“Then I see only one resource.”

“What is that?”

“Go to see Charnot.”

I felt myself growing pale, and stammered, with a piteous look: 

“Monsieur Charnot, of the Acad—­”

“The Academy of Inscriptions; an intimate friend of mine, who will welcome you like a son, for he has none himself, poor man!”

“But perhaps the question is hardly important enough for me to trouble him like this—­”

“Hey?  Not important enough?  All new questions are important.  Charnot specializes on coins.  Coins and costumes are all one.  I will write to tell him you are coming.”

“I beg, sir—­”

“Nonsense; Nonsense; I’ll write him this very evening.  He will be delighted to see you.  I know him well, you understand.  He is like me; he likes industrious young men.”

M. Flamaran held out his hand.

“Good-by, young man.  Marry as soon as you have taken your degree.”

I did not recover from the shock till I was halfway across the Luxembourg Gardens, near the Tennis Court, when I sat down, overcome.  See what comes of enthusiasm and going to call on your tutor!  Ah, young three-and-twenty, when will you learn wisdom?

CHAPTER III

AN APOLOGY

9 P.M.

I have made up my mind.  I shall go to see M. Charnot.  But before that I shall go to his publisher’s and find out something about this famous man’s works, of which I know nothing whatever.

December 31st

He lives in the Rue de l’Universite.

I have called.  I have seen him.  I owe this to an accident, to the servant’s forgetting her orders.

As I entered, on the stroke of five, he was spinning a spiral twist of paper beneath the lamplight to amuse his daughter—­he a member of the Institute, she a girl of eighteen.  So that is how these big-wigs employ their leisure moments!

The library where I found them was full of book cases-open bookcases, bookcases with glass doors, tall bookcases, dwarf bookcases, bookcases standing on legs, bookcases standing on the floor—­of statuettes yellow with smoke, of desks crowded with paper-weights, paper-knives, pens, and inkstands of “artistic” pat terns.  He was seated at the table, with his back to the fire, his arm lifted, and a hairpin between his finger and thumb—­the pivot round which his paper twist was spinning briskly.  Across the table stood his daughter, leaning forward with her chin on her hands and her white teeth showing as she laughed for laughing’s sake, to give play to her young spirits and gladden her old father’s heart as he gazed on her, delighted.