"Oh!" exclaimed my mother, "he also reads the prayer for chilblains
and that of 'St Hubert,' which Friar Ange has given him, and the
history of that fellow who has been devoured, in the Saint Marcel
suburb, by several devils for having blasphemed the holy name of our
Lord."

My father looked admiringly on me, and then he murmured into the
priest's ear that I learned anything I wanted to know with a native
and natural facility.

"Wherefore," replied the priest, "you must form him to become a man
of letters, which to be, is one of the honours of mankind, the
consolation of human life and a remedy against all evils, actually
against those of love, as it is affirmed by the poet Theocritus."

"Simple cook as I am," was my father's reply, "I hold knowledge in
high esteem, and am quite willing to believe that it also is, as
your reverence says, a remedy for love. But I do not think that it
is a remedy against hunger."

"Well, perhaps it is not a sovereign ointment," replied the priest;
"but it gives some solace, like a sweet balm, although somewhat
imperfect."

As he spoke Catherine the lacemaker appeared on the threshold, with
her bonnet sideways over her ear and her neckerchief very much
creased. Seeing her, my mother frowned and let slip three meshes of
her knitting.

"Monsieur Menetrier," said Catherine to my father, "come and say a