I scrambled to my feet.

"I tell you what it is, Mademoiselle. Just to show what your Brignan really amounts to, and whether I mean to be a monk, and what a reader of books can do when he likes, I have made up my mind to go to Paris; and there I will find your Brignan, and show my scorn of such an illiterate bravo, and cut off his famous moustaches, and bring them back to you for proof! So adieu, Mademoiselle, for this is the last you will see of me till what I have said is done!"

The thing had come into my head in one hot moment, indeed it formed itself as I spoke it; and so I, the quiet and studious, stood committed to an act which the most harebrained brawler in Anjou would have deemed childish folly. Truly, I did lack knowledge of the world.

I turned from Mlle. Celeste's look of incredulous wonderment, and went off through the woods, with swifter strides than I usually took, to our chateau. Of course I dared not tell my parents my reason for wishing to go to Paris. It was enough, to my mother at least, that I should desire to go on any account. The best way in which I could put my resolution to them, which I did that very afternoon, on the terrace where I found them sitting, was thus:

"I have been thinking how little I know of the world. It is true, you have taken me to Paris; but I was only a lad then, and what I saw was with a lad's eyes and under your guidance. I am now twenty-two, and many a man at that age has begun to make his own career. To be worthy of my years, of my breeding, of my name, I ought to know something of life from my own experience. So I have resolved, with your permission, my dear father and mother, to go to Paris and see what I may see."

My mother had turned pale as soon as she saw the drift of my speech, and was for putting every plea in the way. But my father, though he looked serious, seemed not displeased. We talked upon the matter—as to how long I should wish to stay in Paris, whether I had thought of aiming at any particular career there, and of such things. I said I had formed no plans nor hopes: these might or might not come after I had arrived in Paris and looked about me. But see something of the world I must, if only that I might not be at disadvantage in conversation afterward. It was a thing I could afford, for on the attainment of my majority my father had made over to me the income of a portion of our estate, a small enough revenue indeed, but one that looked great in my eyes. He could not now offer any reasonable objection to my project, and he plead my cause with my 

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