Mesmer's letters. The sage was as dissatisfied as his pupil at the nonappreciation of his discovery. For the miraculous cure of the baron's sciatic nerve had found no favour with the peasantry of Touraine, who vowed it was a perilous thing to allow the devil to tamper with scourges sent from Heaven. That party requires little encouragement, as all the world knows, and that it was he who had worked the cure was evident, since the musicians, ere they ran away, had counted the hairs in his tail. Could there be any doubt that without witchcraft or direct aid from the evil one, no tubful of bottles could affect a gentleman's rheumatism? If there had been a sprinkling of holy water by the good priest, as Madame la Baronne had piously wished, it would have been quite another affair. But iron filings and a violoncello! had not the curé preached on the very next Sunday on the subject of Satanic miracles?

Clovis was heartily disgusted with the crassness of the bucolic ignorance and the pig-headedness of its obstinacy, and gave a willing ear to Aglaé's secret hints that it might be well, some of these days, to transplant the magic tub to some more enlightened centre.

She was always right--clear-headed, far-seeing Aglaé! He understood now that the suggestion which had affrighted him on the night of the attempted suicide had merely been an ebullition of overboiling zeal. She, had felt a genuine interest in him; had perceived that the marquise was no fitting helpmeet for a savant, and had been unable to conceal regret that he should not have been freed from a weight which clogged his scientific usefulness. Over-zeal, as Richelieu remarked, is productive of more harm than good, but it should be treated with indulgence in that it springs from laudable intentions. It was wrong to have said that the chatelaine should have been left to drown. But in his heart of hearts, Clovis began to confess to himself that the caresses of the patient during convalescence had been well-nigh unbearable, and that if Heaven thought well to take her in a natural way, it would be a relief rather than otherwise.

The even tenour of déjeuner was disturbed one morning by the announcement that a travelling berline was coming up the road, and that an old gentleman was looking from its window. A travelling berline, covered thick with dust, too! Not a neighbour, then. Who could it be that presumed to invade their monastic privacy? A messenger from Paris, perhaps. Had something awful happened? The abbé and the governess glanced at each other suspiciously, the same unspoken thought occurring to both. Was the crisis come before they were prepared? 

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