ORANTE always addressed M. Joly as "monsieur." Having no recollection of her own father, it might be supposed that when M. Joly assumed the paternal rôle, Dorante would have recognized his claim to the paternal title. It is not to be inferred that because she did not do so she had withheld her love. She adored him. When, dressed in her best frock, she went out for a walk with him, to hold his hand produced in her a sort of ecstasy. That M. Joly returned this adoration was a secret Dorante had discovered at the very beginning of their acquaintance. Perhaps the very fact that this man who had rescued her from poverty and toil was not her father had something to do with the ecstasy and timidity of her love. For Dorante, if not at this time a woman, was going to be one, and therefore discriminated between the affection of a real father and that of a substitute—that is, between love acquired by the accident of birth and love inspired by herself. To say "father" was to say something commonplace. To say "monsieur" was to liberate emotions which gave her much happiness which she did not comprehend.
With this title M. Joly was equally content. That he should be so addressed when, a stranger, he first took her hand in his, was to be expected. That she should persist in so addressing him both amused and pleased him. Dorante had not arrived in the ordinary course of nature—an event which, however agreeable, is nevertheless to be expected. Dorante was the unexpected. Her love was not an obligation; it was a gift. In each case there was that vague sense of possessing something which was not a primary right. Perhaps these subtle distinctions were the result of sex. Perhaps, if Dorante had been a boy, they would have vanished. For it was also true that from the very outset she had not hesitated to call Madame Joly "mamma."
On none of the new duties consequent upon Dorante's adoption had M. Joly entered with more enthusiasm than that of her education. Having peculiar views on this subject, it was fortunate that he could begin with a blank page; for the atmosphere of the Restaurant des Tournelles, in which Dorante's earlier years had been passed, redolent as it was of delectable things, was suggestive of drudgery rather than learning. In arithmetic, for example, she had never gone beyond the calculation of the number of revolutions of the spit required to roast the fowls and joints in whose subsequent fate she had so infinitesimal a share. In this direction M. Joly confined his instruction to the lower levels of the multiplication table; for, he said, as mathematics is an organ of expression, and as Dorante will never have any ideas worthy of expression in that language, it is useless to acquire it.
In history, especially that of his beloved France, he had his own methods. When making an excursion into the past, he followed the same path which he took in their walks—that is to say, the path of the woods and the flowers—with the result that a stretch of monotonous white road which covered her shoes with dust was forgiven for the sake of the mystery and charm of the byway to which it led. Thus, even of that dreary and chaotic period of the Merovingian kings, Dorante had some very definite knowledge, her memory being tricked into obedience by such romantic details as that the slave Ingonda had become the wife of Clother, and that the great Queen Frédégonde was reputed to be a witch with a magic ring. M. Joly himself had felt no great interest in Frédégonde's ring until after Dorante had proclaimed its importance. Not infrequently, in opening her eyes to one world, he was surprised to find that she opened his to another, and that while he was beginning her education she was completing his own. In sharing thus with her his mental estate he found a number of coins which had been overlooked.