not see the end of, perhaps, because we're both old, but it
will be complete. Everything's rotten; everything must burst!"

It was horrible to see that old flunkey of the Empire, gaunt and
stooping, covered with filth and crying like Jeremiah: "This is the
end," with his toothless mouth wide open like a great black hole. I was
afraid and ashamed before him, I longed to see his back; and I thought
to myself: "O Monsieur Chalmette! O my little vineyard at Montbars!"

Same date.

Great news! Madame Paganetti came this afternoon mysteriously and
brought me a letter from the Governor. He is in London, just about to
start a magnificent enterprise. Splendid offices in the finest part of
the city; a stock company with superb prospects. He requests me to join
him there, "happy," he says, "to repair in that way the wrong that has
been done me." I shall have twice the salary I had at the
_Territoriale_, with lodgings and fuel thrown in, five shares in the new
company, and all my back pay in full. Only a trifling advance to be made
for travelling expenses and some few importunate debts in the quarter.
_Vive la joie!_ my fortune is assured. I must write to the notary at
Montbars to raise some money on my vineyard.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AT BORDIGHERA.

As M. Joyeuse had informed the examining magistrate, Paul de Gery was on
his way home from Tunis after an absence of three weeks. Three
interminable weeks, passed in struggling amid a network of intrigues, of
plots cunningly devised by the powerful enmity of the Hemerlingues,
wandering from office to office, from department to department, through
that vast _residence_ on the Bardo, where all the different departments
of the State are collected in the same frowning enclosure, bristling
with culverins, under the immediate supervision of the master, like his
stables and his harem. Immediately on his arrival Paul had learned that
the Chamber of Justice was beginning to hear the Jansoulet case in
secret,--a mockery of a trial, lost beforehand; and the Nabob's closed
counting-rooms on the Marine Quay, the seals placed upon his cash boxes,
his vessels lying at anchor in the harbor of Goletta, the guard of
_chaouchs_ around his palaces, already denoted a species of civil death,
an intestacy as to which there would soon be nothing left to do but
divide the spoils.

Not a champion, not a friend in that greedy pack; even the Frankish
colony seemed not displeased at the downfall of a c