Doctor Pascal | Page 2

cornice of the smoke-darkened ceiling, dated
from the time of Louis XV.
An hour passed without a sound, without a breath. Then Pascal, who, as
a diversion from his work, had opened a newspaper--_Le
Temps_--which had lain forgotten on the table, uttered a slight
exclamation:
"Why! your father has been appointed editor of the _Epoque_, the
prosperous republican journal which has the publishing of the papers of
the Tuileries."
This news must have been unexpected by him, for he laughed frankly,
at once pleased and saddened, and in an undertone he continued:
"My word! If things had been invented, they could not have been finer.
Life is a strange thing. This is a very interesting article."
Clotilde made no answer, as if her thoughts were a hundred leagues

away from what her uncle was saying. And he did not speak again, but
taking his scissors after he had read the article, he cut it out and pasted
it on a sheet of paper, on which he made some marginal notes in his
large, irregular handwriting. Then he went back to the press to classify
this new document in it. But he was obliged to take a chair, the shelf
being so high that he could not reach it notwithstanding his tall stature.
On this high shelf a whole series of enormous bundles of papers were
arranged in order, methodically classified. Here were papers of all sorts:
sheets of manuscript, documents on stamped paper, articles cut out of
newspapers, arranged in envelopes of strong blue paper, each of which
bore on the outside a name written in large characters. One felt that
these documents were tenderly kept in view, taken out continually, and
carefully replaced; for of the whole press, this corner was the only one
kept in order.
When Pascal, mounted on the chair, had found the package he was
looking for, one of the bulkiest of the envelopes, on which was written
the name "Saccard," he added to it the new document, and then
replaced the whole under its corresponding alphabetical letter. A
moment later he had forgotten the subject, and was complacently
straightening a pile of papers that were falling down. And when he at
last jumped down off the chair, he said:
"When you are arranging the press, Clotilde, don't touch the packages
at the top; do you hear?"
"Very well, master," she responded, for the third time, docilely.
He laughed again, with the gaiety that was natural to him.
"That is forbidden."
"I know it, master."
And he closed the press with a vigorous turn of the key, which he then
threw into a drawer of his writing table. The young girl was sufficiently
acquainted with his researches to keep his manuscripts in some degree
of order; and he gladly employed her as his secretary; he made her copy
his notes when some confrere and friend, like Dr. Ramond asked him
to send him some document. But she was not a _savante_; he simply
forbade her to read what he deemed it useless that she should know.
At last, perceiving her so completely absorbed in her work, his
attention was aroused.
"What is the matter with you, that you don't open your lips?" he said.

"Are you so taken up with the copying of those flowers that you can't
speak?"
This was another of the labors which he often intrusted to her--to make
drawings, aquarelles, and pastels, which he afterward used in his works
as plates. Thus, for the past five years he had been making some
curious experiments on a collection of hollyhocks; he had obtained a
whole series of new colorings by artificial fecundations. She made
these sorts of copies with extraordinary minuteness, an exactitude of
design and of coloring so extreme that he marveled unceasingly at the
conscientiousness of her work, and he often told her that she had a
"good, round, strong, clear little headpiece."
But, this time, when he approached her to look over her shoulder, he
uttered a cry of comic fury.
"There you are at your nonsense! Now you are off in the clouds again!
Will you do me the favor to tear that up at once?"
She straightened herself, her cheeks flushed, her eyes aglow with the
delight she took in her work, her slender fingers stained with the red
and blue crayon that she had crushed.
"Oh, master!"
And in this "master," so tender, so caressingly submissive, this term of
complete abandonment by which she called him, in order to avoid
using the words godfather or uncle, which she thought silly, there was,
for the first time, a passionate accent of revolt, the revindication of a
being recovering possession of and asserting itself.
For nearly two hours she had been zealously striving to produce an
exact and faithful copy