hiding-place behind the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took
her fortune to Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur
kept the crown for France; he was allowed to do it, and woman-like,
France was ungrateful."

"Gentlemen," said Bixiou, "a love that does not imply an indissoluble
friendship, to my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of
entire surrender is it that keeps something back? Between these two
diametrically opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as the
other, there is no possible compromise. It seems to me that any
shrinking from a complete union is surely due to a belief that the
union cannot last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that
does not believe that it will last for ever is a hideous thing. (Here
is pure unadulterated Fenelon for you!) At the same time, those who
know the world, the observer, the man of the world, the wearers of
irreproachable gloves and ties, the men who do not blush to marry a
woman for her money, proclaim the necessity of a complete separation
of sentiment and interest. The other sort are lunatics that love and
imagine that they and the woman they love are the only two beings in
the world; for them millions are dirt; the glove or the camellia
flower that She wore is worth millions. If the squandered filthy lucre
is never to be found again in their possession, you find the remains
of floral relics hoarded in dainty cedar-wood boxes. They cannot
distinguish themselves one from the other; for them there is no 'I'
left. _Thou_--that is their Word made flesh. What can you do? Can you
stop the course of this 'hidden disease of the heart'? There are fools
that love without calculation and wise men that calculate while they
love."

"To my thinking Bixiou is sublime," cried Blondet. "What does Finot