“Alas! Professor,” exclaimed Jules, “I have just left the glass-house, and all is lost! There is no possibility of uniting Jarpeado to any living creature, he refused the Coccus ficus caricæ. I had them under our best microscope.”
“Ah, you horrid creature!” cried Anna. “This is then a prince of the insect world, and yet his history is interesting. I might have known he was no human being, since you say he will die faithful to his first love.”
“Hush, child,” said Granarius, “I fail to note the difference between dying faithful and unfaithful, when it is a question of dying.”
“You will never understand me, sir,” said Anna, in a tone which startled the mild professor, “and as for you, Mr. Jules, all your science and all your charms will never tempt the prince to prove unfaithful. You, sir, shall never be capable of love such as his. A little less science and a trifle more common sense would have suggested keeping him among the dust of his defunct ancestors, where, perchance, he left his living partner, or will find another of red-royal blood.”
The professor and his pupil elated by this marvellous suggestion hastened to replace Jarpeado in the dust from which he had been taken.
Alas! sighed Anna, Jules loves me not, else he would have lingered with me to tell his love. I made the path clear for him. Yet he perceived it not, but has gone with my father to speculate on the introduction of this scarlet Coccus cacti dynasty into Algeria. Following them to the large hothouse in the Jardin des Plantes, Anna observed her father consigning the small paper of Coccus cacti dust into the centre of the first nopal that had flowered.
A jealous Englishman, witness of this scientific operation, remarked in passing, “This old fool uses the plant as a portfolio!”
“Heat the house well,” cried Granarius, as he fell into a profound reverie, leaving his daughter and Jules to talk of love, or science.
“So, Mr. Jules, you have ceased to love me,” said Anna.