the world of his own and see that he get only good possessions, good knowledge, good experience!  I took him to the mountains of the Tyrol—­two years—­and there his body became strong and splendid while his brain was taking in the stores.  It was quick, for his brain had retained some habits; it was not a baby’s brain, and some small part of its old stores had not been lost.  But if anything useless or bad remain, we empty it out—­I and those mountain’ with their pure air.  Now, I say he is all good and the work was good; I am proud!  But I wish to restore all that was good in his life; your Keredec is something of a poet.—­You may put it:  much the old fool!  And for that greates’ restoration of all I have brought my boy back to France; since it was necessary.  It was a madness, and I thank the good God I was mad enough to do it.  I cannot tell you yet, my dear sir:  but you shall see, you shall see what the folly of that old Keredec has done!  You shall see, you shall—­and I promise it—­what a Paradise, when the good God helps, an old fool’s dream can make!”

A half-light had broken upon me as he talked, pacing the floor, thundering his paean of triumph, his Titanic gestures bruising the harmless air.  Only one explanation, incredible, but possible, sufficed.  Anything was possible, I thought—­anything was probable—­with this dreamer whom the trump of Fame, executing a whimsical fantasia, proclaimed a man of science!

“By the wildest chance,” I gasped, “you don’t mean that you wanted him to fall in love—­”

He had reached the other end of the room, but at this he whirled about on me, his laughter rolling out again, till it might have been heard at Pere Baudry’s.

“Ha, my dear sir, you have said it!  But you knew it; you told him to come to me and tell me.”

“But I mean that you—­unless I utterly misunderstand—­you seem to imply that you had selected some one now in France whom you planned that he should care for—­that you had selected the lady whom you know as Madame d’Armand.”

“Again,” he shouted, “you have said it!”

“Professor Keredec,” I returned, with asperity, “I have no idea how you came to conceive such a preposterous scheme, but I agree heartily that the word for it is madness.  In the first place, I must tell you that her name is not even d’Armand—­”

“My dear sir, I know.  It was the mistake of that absurd Amedee.  She is Mrs. Harman.”

“You knew it?” I cried, hopelessly confused.  “But Oliver still speaks of her as Madame d’Armand.”

“He does not know.  She has not told him.”

“But why haven’t you told him?”

“Ha, that is a story, a poem,” he cried, beginning to pace the floor again—­“a ballad as old as the oldest of Provence!  There is a reason, my dear sir, which I cannot tell you, but it lies within the romance of what you agree is my madness.  Some day, I hope, you shall understand and applaud!  In the meantime—­”