"Had it moved me?"
"I thought it had made me a little sleepy."
(After a pause:) "Allons donc! It was of no use taking that tone with him. Bad as I was--and he should be sorry to have to name all my faults at a breath--God and nature had given me 'trop de sensibilité et de sympathie' not to be profoundly affected by an appeal so touching."
"Indeed!" I responded, rousing myself quickly, "I was not affected at all--not a whit."
And in proof, I drew from my pocket a perfectly dry handkerchief, still clean and in its folds.
Hereupon I was made the object of a string of strictures rather piquant than polite. I listened with zest. After those two days of unnatural silence, it was better than music to hear M. Paul haranguing again just in his old fashion. I listened, and meantime solaced myself and Sylvie with the contents of a bonbonnière, which M. Emanuel's gifts kept well supplied with chocolate comfits: It pleased him to see even a small matter from his hand duly appreciated. He looked at me and the spaniel while we shared the spoil; he put up his penknife. Touching my hand with the bundle of new-cut quills, he said:--"Dites donc, petite soeur--speak frankly--what have you thought of me during the last two days?"
But of this question I would take no manner of notice; its purport made my eyes fill. I caressed Sylvie assiduously. M. Paul, leaning-- over the desk, bent towards me:--"I called myself your brother," he said: "I hardly know what I am--brother--friend--I cannot tell. I know I think of you--I feel I wish, you well--but I must check myself; you are to be feared. My best friends point out danger, and whisper caution."
"You do right to listen to your friends. By all means be cautious."
"It is your religion--your strange, self-reliant, invulnerable creed, whose influence seems to clothe you in, I know not what, unblessed panoply. You are good--Père Silas calls you good, and loves you--but your terrible, proud, earnest Protestantism, there is the danger. It expresses itself by your eye at times; and again, it gives you certain tones and certain gestures that make my flesh creep. You are not demonstrative, and yet, just now--when you handled that tract--my God! I thought Lucifer smiled."
"Certainly I don't respect that tract--what then?"
"Not respect that tract? But it is the pure essence of faith, love, charity! I thought it would touch you: in its gentleness, I trusted that it could not fail. I laid it in your desk with a prayer: I must indeed be a sinner: Heaven will not hear the petitions that come warmest from my heart. You scorn my little offering. Oh, cela me fait mal!"