“Yes,” said Phellion, “that was my idea as you told it; the intermediary is or ought to be responsible. I should not have hesitated to do as Monsieur de la Peyrade did, and I do not think that after such conduct as that he ought to be taxed with Jesuitism.”
“Yes, you would have done so,” said Minard, “and so should I, but we shouldn’t have done it with a brass band; we should have paid our money quietly, like gentlemen. But this electoral manager, how is he going to pay it? Out of the ‘dot’?”
At this moment the little page entered the room and gave a letter to Felix Phellion. It came from pere Picot, and was written at his dictation by Madame Lambert, for which reason we will not reproduce the orthography. The writing of Madame Lambert was of those that can never be forgotten when once seen. Recognizing it instantly, Felix hastened to say:—
“A letter from the professor”; then, before breaking the seal, he added, “Will you permit me, Monsieur le maire.”
“He’ll rate you finely,” said Minard, laughing. “I never saw anything so comical as his wrath last night.”
Felix, as he read the letter, smiled to himself. When he had finished it, he passed it to his father, saying:—
“Read it aloud if you like.”
Whereupon, with his solemn voice and manner, Phellion read as follows:—
My dear Felix,—I have just received your note; it came in the
nick of time, for I was, as they say, in a fury with you. You tell
me that you were guilty of that abuse of confidence (about which I
intended to write you a piece of my mind) in order to give a
knock-down blow to my relations by proving that a man capable of
making such complicated calculations as your discovery required
was not a man to put in a lunatic asylum or drag before a
judiciary council. That argument pleases me, and it makes such a
good answer to the infamous proceedings of my relations that I
praise you for having had the idea. But you sold it to me, that
argument, pretty dear when you put me in company with a star, for
you know very well that propinquity wouldn’t please me at all. It
is not at my age, and after solving the great problem of perpetual
motion, that a man could take up with such rubbish as that,—good
only for boys and greenhorns like you; and that is what I have
taken the liberty this morning to go and tell the minister of
public instruction, by whom I must say I was received with the
most perfect urbanity. I asked him to see whether, as he had made
a mistake and sent them to the wrong address, he could not take
back his cross and his pension,—though to be sure, as I told him,
I deserved them for other things.
“The government,” he replied, “is not in the habit of making
mistakes; what it does is always properly done, and it never
annuls an ordinance signed by the hand of his Majesty. Your great
labors have deserved the two favors the King has granted you; it
is a long-standing debt, which I am happy to pay off in his name.”
“But Felix?” I said; “because after all for a young man it is not
such a bad discovery.”
“Monsieur Felix Phellion,” replied the minister, “will receive in
the course of the day his appointment to the rank of Chevalier of
the Legion of honor; I will have it signed this morning by the
king. Moreover, there is a vacant place at the Academy of
Sciences, and if you are not a candidate for it—”
“I, in the Academy!” I interrupted, with the frankness of speech
you know I always use; “I execrate academies; they are stiflers,
extinguishers, assemblages of sloths, idlers, shops with big signs
and nothing to sell inside—”
“Well, then,” said the minister, smiling, “I think that at the
next election Monsieur Felix Phellion will have every chance, and
among those chances I count the influence of the government which
is secured to him.”
There, my poor boy, is all that I have been able to do to reward
your good intentions and to prove to you that I am no longer
angry. I think the relations are going to pull a long face. Come
and talk about it to-day at four o’clock,—for I don’t dine after
bedtime, as I saw some people doing last night in a house where I
had occasion to mention your talents in a manner that was very
advantageous to you. Madame Lambert, who does better with a
saucepan than with pen and ink, shall distinguish herself, though
it is Friday, and she never lets me off a fast day. But she has
promised us a fish dinner worthy of an archbishop, with a fine
half-bottle of champagne (doubled if need be) to wash it down.
Your old professor and friend,