“No doubt—­no doubt!” said Patoux, nodding gravely—­“There was something about him that seemed a sort of shield against evil—­or at least, so said my wife,—­and so say my children.  Only the other day, my boy Henri—­he is big and full of mischief as boys will be—­was playing with two or three younger lads, and one of them like a little sneak, stole up behind him and gave him a blow with a stick, which broke in two with the force of the way the young rascal went to work with it.  Now, thought I, there will be need for me to step out and stop this quarrel, for Henri will beat that miserable little wretch into a jelly!  But nothing of the sort!  My boy turned round with a bright laugh—­picked up the two pieces of the stick and gave them back to the little coward with a civil bow “Hit in front next time!” he said.  And the little wretch turned tail and began to boo-hoo in fine fashion—­crying as if he had been hurt instead of Henri.  But they are the best friends in the world now.  I asked Henri about it afterwards, and he turned as red as an apple in the cheeks.  ’I wanted to kill him, father,’ he said,—­’but I knew that the boy who was with Cardinal Bonpre would not have done it—­and so I did not!’ Now look you, for a rough little fellow such as Henri, that was a great victory over his passions—­and there is no doubt the Cardinal’s little foundling was the cause of his so managing himself.”

Pierre Midon had nothing to say in answer,—­the subject was getting beyond him, and he was a man who, when thought became difficult, gave up thinking altogether.

And while these two simple-minded worthies were thus talking and strolling together home through the streets of Paris, Cyrillon Vergniaud, having parted from the few friends who had paid him the respect of their attendance at his father’s grave, was making his way towards the Champs Elysees in a meditative frame of mind, when his attention was suddenly caught and riveted by a placard set up in front of one of the newspaper kiosks at the corner of a boulevard, on which in great black letters, was the name “Angela Sovrani.”  His heart gave one great bound—­then stood still—­the streets of the city reeled round him, and he grew cold and sick.  “Meurtre de la celebre Angela Sovrani!”

Hardly knowing what he was about, he bought the paper.  The news was in a mere paragraph briefly stating that the celebrated artist had been found stabbed in her studio, and that up to the present there was no trace of the unknown assassin.

Passionate and emotional as his warm nature was, the great tears rushed to Cyrillon’s eyes.  In one moment he realized what he had been almost unconsciously cherishing in his own mind ever since Angela’s beautiful smile had shone upon him.  When in the few minutes of speech he had had with her she admitted herself to be the mysterious correspondent who had constantly written to him as “Gys Grandit,” fervently sympathising with his theories, and urging