My mother's face brightened.
"Is that your opinion?" she said.
"Yes; and yours too, is it not, mother?"
"Alas! yes; but what is to become of us?"
"Nonsense!" I replied; "you forget that I can construe the De viris, and therefore I understand my father's motto: 'Deus dedit, Deus dabit—God has given, God will give.'"
"Well then, my child, go off to bed after that: you aggravate me very much sometimes, but I am sure your heart is in the right place."
I went to bed without realising quite the importance of the decision my filial instinct had just prompted me to make, and that, as my mother had warned me, it might very probably mean the shaping of my whole future life.
Next day M. Collard came again, and it was settled he should ask nothing whatever on my behalf, but only apply for a tobacco-shop for my mother.
A strange anomaly this—the widow of the Horatius Codes of the Tyrol selling tobacco!
And my education was to be continued at the Abbé Grégoire's.