hero had singular advantages in the way of replies. To-day it chanced
that his ribs troubled him. But here's a remarkable thing! never did
the worthy chevalier complain of his wounds. The ills that were really
the matter with him he expected, he knew them and he bore them; but
his fancied ailments, his headaches, the gnawings in his stomach, the
buzzing in his ears, and a thousand other fads and symptoms made him
horribly uneasy; he posed as incurable,--and not without reason, for
doctors up to the present time have found no remedy for diseases that
don't exist.

"Yesterday the trouble was, I believe, in your legs," said the rector.

"It moves about," replied the chevalier.

"Legs to ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine.

"Without stopping on the way?" said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, smiling.

The chevalier bowed gravely, making a negative gesture which was not a
little droll, and proved to an observer that in his youth the sailor
had been witty and loving and beloved. Perhaps his fossil life at
Guerande hid many memories. When he stood, solemnly planted on his two
heron-legs in the sunshine on the mall, gazing at the sea or watching
the gambols of his little dog, perhaps he was living again in some
terrestrial paradise of a past that was rich in recollections.

"So the old Duc de Lenoncourt is dead," said the baron, remembering
the paragraph of the "Quotidienne," where his wife had stopped
reading. "Well, the first gentleman of the Bedchamber followed his
master soon. I shall go next."