Conscience | Page 4

meal of them. D.W.]

CONSCIENCE
By HECTOR MALOT
With a Preface by EDOUARD PAILLERON, of the French Academy

BOOK 1.
HECTOR MALOT
HECTOR-HENRI MALOT, the son of a notary public, was born at La
Brouille (Seine-Inferieure), March 20, 1830. He studied law, intending
to devote himself also to the Notariat, but toward 1853 or 1854
commenced writing for various small journals. Somewhat later he
assisted in compiling the 'Biographie Generale' of Firmin Didot, and
was also a contributor to some reviews. Under the generic title of 'Les
Victimes d'Amour,' he made his debut with the following three
family-romances: 'Les Amants (1859), Les Epoux (1865), and Les
Enfants (1866).' About the same period he published a book, 'La Vie
Moderne en Angleterre.' Malot has written quite a number of novels, of
which the greatest is 'Conscience,' crowned by the French Academy in
1878.
His works have met with great success in all countries. They possess
that lasting interest which attends all work based on keen observation
and masterly analysis of the secret motives of human actions.
The titles of his writings run as follows: 'Les Amours de Jacques (1868);
Un Beau Frere (1869); Romain Kalbris (1864), being a romance for
children; Une Bonne Afaire, and Madame Obernin (1870); Un Cure de
Province (1872); Un Mariage sons le Second Empire (1873); Une Belle
Mere (1874); L'Auberge du Monde (1875-1876, 4 vols.); Les Batailles
du Mariage (1877, 3 vols.); Cara (1877); Le Docteur Claude (1879); Le
Boheme Tapageuse (1880, 3 vols.); Pompon, and Une Femme d'Argent
(1881); La Petite Soeur, and Les Millions Honteux (1882); Les
Besogneux, and Paulette (1883); Marichette, and Micheline (1884.); Le
Lieutenant Bonnet, and Sang Bleu (1885); Baccara, and Zyte (1886);
Viceo Francis, Seduction, and Ghislaine (1887); Mondaine (1888);
Mariage Riche, and Justice (1889); Mere (1890), Anie (1891);
Complices (1892); Conscience (1893); and Amours de Jeunes et
Amours de Vieux (1894).'
About this time Hector Malot resolved not to write fiction any more.
He announced this determination in a card published in the journal, 'Le
Temps,' May 25, 1895--It was then maliciously stated that "M. Malot
his retired from business after having accumulated a fortune." However,
he took up his pen again and published a history of his literary life: Le
Roman de mes Romans (1896); besides two volumes of fiction,

L'Amour dominateur (1896), and Pages choisies (1898), works which
showed that, in the language of Holy Writ, "his eye was not dimmed
nor his natural force abated," and afforded him a triumph over his
slanderers.
EDOUARD PAILLERON de l'Academie Francaise.

CONSCIENCE

CHAPTER I
THE REUNION
When Crozat, the Bohemian, escaped from poverty, by a good marriage
that made him a citizen of the Rue de Vaugirard, he did not break with
his old comrades; instead of shunning them, or keeping them at a
distance, he took pleasure in gathering them about him, glad to open his
house to them, the comforts of which were very different from the attic
of the Rue Ganneron, that he had occupied for so long a time.
Every Wednesday, from four to seven o'clock, he had a reunion at his
house, the Hotel des Medicis, and it was a holiday for which his friends
prepared themselves. When a new idea occurred to one of the habitues
it was caressed, matured, studied in solitude, in order to be presented in
full bloom at the assembly.
Crozat's reception of his friends was pleasing, simple, like the man,
cordial on the part of the husband, as well as on the part of the wife,
who, having been an actress, held to the religion of comradeship: On a
table were small pitchers of beer and glasses; within reach was an old
stone jar from Beauvais, full of tobacco. The beer was good, the
tobacco dry, and the glasses were never empty.
And it was not silly subjects that were discussed here, worldly
babblings, or gossiping about absent friends, but the great questions
that ruled humanity: philosophy, politics, society, and religion.
Formed at first of friends, or, at least, of comrades who had worked and
suffered together, these reunions had enlarged gradually, until one day
the rooms at the Hotel des Medicis became a 'parlotte' where preachers

of ideas and of new religions, thinkers, reformers, apostles, politicians,
aesthetes, and even babblers in search of ears more or less complaisant
that would listen to them, met together. Any one might come who
wished, and if one did not enter there exactly as one would enter an
ordinary hotel, it was sufficient to be brought by an habitue in order to
have the right to a pipe, some beer, and to speak.
One of the habitues, Brigard, was a species of apostle, who had
acquired celebrity by practising in his daily life the ideas that he
professed and preached. Comte de