s skull with a red-hot iron.

"Laughing! are they laughing!" stammered Castanier.

He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house
with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying
from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with
the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie and the
Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two
o'clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was
there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage
(it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman
lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner's name to avoid raising
suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports,
stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the barrier he saw two
gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him
but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in his throat.

"Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.

In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _The Cashier_,
he saw himself, in three months' time, condemned to twenty years of
penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts
in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn to have the
irons riveted on his limbs.

"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!..." said Aquilina. "You are very
solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."

"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an end,
and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.

The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.

"Very well, what is it?"

"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going next
to Versailles, there to be arrested."

"How so?"

"Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returned
the Englishman.

Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.

"Suppose that the Devil