Bressant

This tickled Professor Valeyon so much, that he burst out in a most

genuine laugh. The intellectual animal of two or three months before

seemed to have laid aside all claims to what his brain had won for him,

and to be beginning existence over again with a new object and new

materials. And had Bressant indeed been a child, the succession of his

ideas and impulses could hardly have been more primitive and natural.

"What's to become of our Hebrew and history, if you turn poet?" inquired

the old gentleman, still chuckling.

Bressant turned his head away and closed his eyes wearily. "I don't want

any thing more to do with that," said he. "Love is study enough, and

work enough, for a lifetime. Mathematics, and logic, and philosophy--all

those things have nothing to do with love, and couldn't help me in it.

It's outside of every thing else: it has laws of its own: I'm just

beginning to learn them."

"A professional lover! well, as long as you recognize the sufficiency of

one object in your studies, you might do worse, that's certain. But you

can't make a living out of it, my boy."

"I don't need money, I have enough; if I hadn't, money-making is for

men without hearts; but mine is bigger than my head; I must give myself

up to it."

"That won't do," returned the professor, shaking his head. "Lovers must

earn their bread-and-butter as well as people with brains. Besides,"

here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both

forgotten. This matter of your false name--you can't be married as

Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you

said, on preserving the incognito, I have reason to believe that you

stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the

minister has pronounced your real name."

"No matter!" said the young man, with an impatient movement, as if to

dismiss an unprofitable subject. "I shall have Sophie; my father's will

can't deprive me of her. I don't want to be famous, nor to have a great

reputation--except with her."

The old man was touched at this devotion, unreasonable and impracticable

though it was. He laid his hand kindly on the invalid's big shoulder.

"I don't say but that a wife's a good exchange for the world, my boy;

I'm glad you should feel it, too. But when you marry her, you promise to

support her, as long as you have strength and health to do it. It's a

natural and necessary consequence of your love for her"--and here the

professor paused a moment to marvel at the position in which he found

himself--stating the first axioms of life to such a man as this pupil of

his; "and you should be unwilling to take her, as I certainly should be

to give her, on any other terms. If your hands are empty, you must at

any rate be able to show that they won't always continue so."