"What is to be done, my dear Rémy? You, God's anointed, ought to know better than anyone the proverb:
"'Man proposes and God disposes.' It is true I was entered as a barrister in 1752 at the High Judicial Court of Paris."
"Ah! I knew it!" said the good priest, withdrawing the finger from his breviary, which marked the place where he had left off reading. "So you did become a barrister?"
"Yes; but at the same time that I was called to the Bar," continued Bougainville, "I enlisted in the Musketeers."
"Oh, indeed! You always had a taste for arms and a special talent for mathematics."
"You remember that?"
"Why, of course! Was I not your best friend at College?" "Ah, that is very true!"
"Is it you or your brother Louis who belongs to the Academy?"
Bougainville smiled.
"It is my brother," he said; "or rather, it was, for you must know that I had the misfortune to lose him three years ago."