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eyes inflamed by the continual sight of the snow and the smoke of the bivouacs and then the poor creatures fell upon their knees, and then upon their hands-their heads moved for a little alternately to the right and left some faint cries of agony escaped from their open mouth-at last they fell on the snow, and died. I saw, but even did not pity them; for what had they lost by dying?

"At Youpranoüi, the same village where the emperor only missed by an hour being taken by the Russian partisan Leslawin, the soldiers burnt the houses completely as they stood, merely to warm themselves for a few minutes. The light of these fires attracted some of these miserable wretches, whom the excessive severity of the cold and their sufferings had rendered delirious; they ran in like madmen, and gnashing their teeth, and laughing like demons, threw themselves into these furnaces, where they perished in the most horrible convulsions. Their famished companions regarded them undismayed; there was even some who drew out these bodies from the flames, and it is but too true that they ventured to pollute their mouths with this loathsome food! But I must not talk any more of that dreadful time.

66 Only a few thousands, as you know, lived to come back to France. I was one of them; but I was worn out, and having been badly wounded, I got my discharge. It was some time before I was like my former self, and had quite enough of military affairs. Instead of returning to Troyes a great general, I crawled into it a beggar. The hopes of returning to the house of my poor dear father had very much helped to keep me alive; and what, therefore, was my distress of mind when I found that the good man was dead! M. Imbert, my former master, had left the country. My poor old mother, almost blind, was living in loneliness and poverty; she who had always been so comfortably off. My return to her, sir, was truly a scene. We spent the first day weeping for our country, my father, and ourselves. The next day we began to try what I could do to earn bread; but, alas! every where an apprenticeship was necessary, even for six months; and my mother had almost nothing more to sell, and there were two to be maintained now.

"For the thousandth time I was sorry for having been a genius. I wished I had been a plain blockhead, with only as much sense as could have learned a handicraft; for now I should have been above starvation. I considered myself the most unlucky dog in existence; I felt, as it were, that my education had been my ruin."

"Stop, Jacque, I cannot agree to your reasoning," said M. Grandville. 66 Nothing is wanting to him who has a determined purpose, who applies all the energy of his will, and steadily perseveres in the same object; that is to say, he has an end, a single end, to which his every action, his every thought, refers."

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Well, sir, I had one. All my actions, and all my thoughts,

were occupied with my mother. I wished with all my heart to deliver her from poverty, and to make some provision for her old age, and I could hardly succeed in keeping her from absolute want. The rich, sir, little know how hard it is for poor people to gain a livelihood."

"I know it, and that better than most people, Jacque Denoyer. If I now enjoy a competence, I only owe it to my perseverance in the profession my father obliged me to embrace against my will, and from which all my tastes revolted. But, like you, I had an aged and infirm mother, with no other support but my self; and, more than you, I had a sister also to provide for. My mother lived to a great age, surrounded with all the comforts of life. She had seen my sister and myself well settled, and she died in the midst of her grandchildren, blessing us with the fondest affection."

Jacque Denoyer made a motion as if going to rise; he appeared greatly moved; but remained in his place.

"Sir," said he, after a moment's pause, "my mother blessed me also! Notwithstanding, she died with great grief at heart; she knew not what would become of me; and in fact I knew not myself. I wished much to leave the town; for in Troyes our equals had seen us well off and well clothed, and I was then so wretched. M. Deschamps, a solicitor, whom I knew by name, was at this time in want of a trustworthy man to carry money to Bar-upon-Seine. Some one mentioned me to him. He would only pay my expenses there, but not back. I did not care for that, as I did not intend returning to the town. I knew that my mother had a brother who was living in the environs of Bar-upon-Seine, so I resolved to go to him. I knew of no other relation in the world, and so I set out. Ah, sir, my heart failed me when leaving Troyes! I had nobody belonging to me but this uncle, and if he did not devise some plan, what was to become of me?

"An excellent man, sir, was my uncle; every one knew Father Mercier, for so he was styled, for the circuit of ten leagues round. He was considered a very learned man, having studied with the view of becoming a priest before the great Revolution; and so much the more, as he had been professor of the French tongue at Bar-upon-Seine for some time. But for ten years he had lived quietly at Landreville, where he had opened a little school for children. He had no children, and his wife was dead; but Toinette Lerouge, his stepdaughter, lived with him.

"I was received like a son, sir; and at the end of a week my uncle said to me, 'If you will marry Toinette, I will make you my heir. The house and garden are not very large, but they are entirely my own. You know enough to keep school and Toinette also, for she takes my place when I go to the mayor alty to copy deeds. The mayor is fond of us; for my sake he

will employ you when I am unable to work; and if, my children, you do but put your minds to the work, things will go on well. To say the truth, Toinette pleased me greatly; she was neat and pretty, active at her work, and always in good-humour. The only thing I have never repented of in my life is having taken her for a wife. Yes, sir, if it was to do over again, I would do it again. I say so to her every day; and I have said so to her at a time when we were so unhappy, that the greatest favour the good God would have done us would have been to take us out of this world.

"We were now married. I became a schoolmaster, and filled my uncle's place at the mayoralty. It appeared to me most strange at first, being obliged to bear so patiently with this little noisy set; I who had been in the habit of seeing such strict discipline. I felt greatly displeased at it. There was one point upon which my uncle and I never could agree it was upon education. He maintained that knowledge should be diffused as much as possible; that we French were in this respect behind every other civilised nation; that it was shameful to find so few knowing either how to read or write; and that the ignorance of the people was in a great measure the cause of their wretched condition. But, sir, I maintained the contrary. My uncle tried to persuade me that my arguments came from a spirit of contradiction; that though I had lost my time, and was ready for everything, but good for nothing, the fault lay not in my reading and writing, but in my character-my love of change, and want of steady application, and many other things which I do not remember. Nor was my employer the mayor behindhand in his arguments on the same subject.

"One day in particular, after having read me a lecture of an hour long, he said to me 'Listen, Denoyer; I will put a case to you which you will understand, since you have read scientific books, and have been in chemical laboratories. Let us suppose that you, an ignorant man, wished to make use of instruments which you have seen produce marvellous things in the hands of chemists and natural philosophers-what would happen? Not knowing how to make use of them, you would burst the retorts; you would break the instruments; you would hurt yourself, and indignantly exclaim, "All this is good for nothing but to waste time and maim people." But if you have lost your time and maimed yourself, is it the fault of the instruments or of those who make them work wonders, or rather yours, who do not know how to use them?'

"That was a famous argument, sir," said Jacque Denoyer. "And what answer did you make to the mayor?" demanded M. Grandville, smiling.

"I do not remember, sir. I was more ready with an answer then than I am now. But the mayor, without yielding an inch of ground, said to me, 'Well, Denoyer, both at school

and at M. Imbert's you were given instruments which you did not know how to make use of, because you did not wish to do So. Knowing how to read, write, cipher, and draw, would have enabled you, with the advice of M. Imbert, to become a distinguished man, no matter in what career, if you had been resolved to work; but you were not so resolved. Then M. Imbert was glad to get rid of you, and let you go off as a soldier. In the regiment, your knowledge was of some little use to you; but you did not try to increase it-to extend it-the only means of rendering it profitable. On your return, if you had not known how to read or write, you would not have been able to support your mother, not having any trade at your fingers'-ends; for with your head, if even you had not known how to read or write, for all that you would not have been a stone-cutter, like your father, and you would not now be a schoolmaster. Your knowledge, however slight it may be, has been of some use to you in the regiment, at Troyes, and here; it is not that, therefore, which has injured you, but your not knowing how to make use of it-your carelessness, and the changeableness of your disposition, which you have never endeavoured to overcome.' This was very hard to hear, sir," continued Jacque Denoyer. "Happily, the mayor only spoke thus to me when we were alone together. I felt at times that he was right, but I asked myself afterwards-Who will answer for it, but that many of my pupils will be like my self? Instead of following a good trade, they will employ their time now at one thing and now at another; and that in the end they also will only arrive at being ready for everything, and good for nothing. And then scruples of conscience arose, and I felt that, by instructing them, I was not well employed, because I was not at all persuaded of the utility of the instruction that I was giving them. However, sir, things went on pretty well till the death of my uncle; then my disgust increased so very much, that I wandered all day like a troubled spirit. Toinette anxiously inquired what was the matter with me. Ah! Toinette is a woman of sense, and of a kind heart. She entered into my scruples, and said to me, 'Jacque, you must not follow a profession which troubles your conscience. See what you would like to undertake. Even if you should wish to quit the country, I am ready to go with you.' She spoke to the mayor, who was kind enough to write to some person of his acquaintance at Bar-upon-Seine. This person procured me a place as overseer in the paper factory of M. Bonchamp. bade adieu to Landreville, after having sold our house and garden; and I went to reside with Toinette and Pierre, our firstborn, at M. Bonchamp's, at Bar-upon-Seine.

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"I should only tire you were I to tell you how from M. Bonchamp I went to M. Laville, from M. Laville to M. Blanche, from M. Blanche to M. Lafond, and from that to I know not how many places. I could not stay long anywhere."

"How came that?" asked M. Grandville, who had listened to Jacque Denoyer with much interest.

I do not know, sir; if it was not that, continually thinking, in spite of myself, of what the mayor had said to me, I wished to make up for lost time, and laboured to increase my knowledge, so as to render me decidedly good for something. But I was discouraged at seeing how many things I had to learn; and I thought that it was henceforth too late to become a really wellinformed or good workman. Once discouraged, I neglected my duty, and thus got myself discharged.

At first every one was good enough to be astonished at the quantity of things I knew; at my finding a remedy for everything; at my being able to supply, by my own invention, anything wanting in the workshops and in the house. But astonishment and praise were soon succeeded by their getting tired of the interruptions thus occasioned to that part of the business committed to me. They first became exacting, and then unjust. Ah, sir! why did I learn to read and write? Why was I not all my life a good workman, like my father? An excellent man he was! He never opened a book in his life, nor my mother either."

"And does Toinette know how to read and write?" inquired M. Grandville.

"Yes, sir, and to write also very nicely. At one time that, finding nothing to do, I left Bar-upon-Seine as a carrier, she took it into her head to open a class for little girls. During the two years I was absent, she earned enough to be enabled to show me, on my return, my three children comfortably clothed, and some articles of furniture in the house which was not there when I went away."

"Was it you that prevented her from continuing it?"

"No, sir; it was the government. Toinette had no diploma, and you must have one to keep a school; and she was not learned enough to pass an examination."

"If you had remained at Landreville," said M. Grandville, "could you have succeeded your uncle as schoolmaster?"

"Yes, sir; thanks to the patronage of the mayor, who would have given me a diploma."

"And would Toinette have been able to keep the class in absence?"

"Without the least difficulty, sir."

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"Jacque Denoyer," said M. Grandville in a serious tone, flect, I beg of you, on all you have just been telling me; then decide yourself whose fault it has been if your lot, and that of your wife and children, have been marked by misfortune. By your own avowal Toinette is almost as well educated as yourself, and her knowledge, far from being injurious to her, has been useful both to herself and young family. How comes it, then, that what has, as you say, been utterly useless to you, has been to her a means of livelihood?"

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