'Yes, workman's hands,' retorted the minister, 'and I wish you many like them. Believe me, they will do much to help the chief industry of your city. Skilled as they are in chemical work, they are equally capable of wielding the pen, the pencil, the scalpel and the lens. As you here seem unaware of it, I am delighted to inform you.'
This time, I should have liked the ground to open and swallow me up. Fortunately, the bell rang for the train to start. I said goodbye to the minister and, hurriedly taking to flight, left him laughing at the trick which he had played me.
The incident was noised about, could not help being so, for the peristyle of a railway station keeps no secrets. I then learned to what annoyances the shadow of the great exposes us. I was looked upon as an influential person, having the favor of the gods at my disposal. Place hunters and canvassers tormented me. One wanted a license to sell tobacco and stamps, another a scholarship for his son, another an increase of his pension. I had only to ask and Ishould obtain, said they.
O simple people, what an illusion was yours! You could not have hit upon a worse intermediary. I figuring as a postulant! I have many faults, I admit, but that is certainly not one of them. I got rid of the importunate people as best I could, though they were utterly unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from my ceiling! They would have taken me for an idiot.
Six months elapsed; and I received a letter summoning me to call upon the minister at his office. I suspected a proposal to promote me to a more important grammar school and wrote begging that Imight be left where I was, among my vats and my insects. A second letter arrived, more pressing than the first and signed by the minister's own hand. This letter said: 'Come at once, or I shall send my gendarmes to fetch you.'
There was no way out of it. Twenty-four hours later, I was in M.
Duruy's room. He welcomed me with exquisite cordiality, gave me his hand and, taking up a number of the Moniteur: 'Read that,' he said. 'You refused my chemical apparatus; but you won't refuse this.
I looked at the line to which his finger pointed. I read my name in the list of the Legion of Honor. Quite stupid with surprise, Istammered the first words of thanks that entered my head.
'Come here,' said he, 'and let me give you the accolade. I will be your sponsor. You will like the ceremony all the better if it is held in private, between you and me: I know you!'
He pinned the red ribbon to my coat, kissed me on both cheeks, made me telegraph the great event to my family. What a morning, spent with that good man!
I well know the vanity of decorative ribbonry and tinware, especially when, as too often happens, intrigue degrades the honor conferred; but, coming as it did, that bit of ribbon is precious to me. It is a relic, not an object for show. I keep it religiously in a drawer.
There was a parcel of big books on the tab1e a collection of the reports on the progress of science drawn up for the International Exhibition of 1867, which had just closed.
'Those books are for you,' continued the minister. 'Take them with you. You can look through them at your leisure: they may interest you. There is something about your insects in them. You're to have this too: it will pay for your journey. The trip which I made you take must not be at your own expense. If there is anything over, spend it on your laboratory.'
And he handed me a roll of twelve hundred francs. In vain Irefused, remarking that my journey was not so burdensome as all that; besides, his embrace and his bit of ribbon were of inestimable value compared with my disbursements. He insisted:
'Take it,' he said, 'or I shall be very angry. There's something else: you must come to the emperor's with me tomorrow, to the reception of the learned societies.'
Seeing me greatly perplexed and as though demoralized by the prospect of an imperial interview: 'Don't try to escape me,' he said, 'or look out for the gendarmes of my letter! You saw the fellows in the bearskin caps on your way up. Mind you don't fall into their hands. In any case, lest you should be tempted to run away, we will go to the Tuileries together, in my carriage.'
