otherwise engaged; and here we all three were taking our "ebats" in the
fete-blazing park at midnight!

The fact was, Madame was only acting according to her quite justifiable
wont. I remembered now I had heard it said among the teachers--though
without at the time particularly noticing the gossip--that often, when
we thought Madame in her chamber, sleeping, she was gone, full-dressed,
to take her pleasure at operas, or plays, or balls. Madame had no sort
of taste for a monastic life, and took care--largely, though
discreetly--to season her existence with a relish of the world.

Half a dozen gentlemen of her friends stood about her. Amongst these, I
was not slow to recognise two or three. There was her brother, M.
Victor Kint; there was another person, moustached and with long hair--a
calm, taciturn man, but whose traits bore a stamp and a semblance I
could not mark unmoved. Amidst reserve and phlegm, amidst contrasts of
character and of countenance, something there still was which recalled
a face--mobile, fervent, feeling--a face changeable, now clouded, and
now alight--a face from my world taken away, for my eyes lost, but
where my best spring-hours of life had alternated in shadow and in
glow; that face, where I had often seen movements so near the signs of
genius--that why there did not shine fully out the undoubted fire, the
thing, the spirit, and the secret itself--I could never tell. Yes--this
Josef Emanuel--this man of peace--reminded me of his ardent brother.

Besides Messieurs Victor and Josef, I knew another of this party. This
third person stood behind and in the shade, his attitude too was
stooping, yet his dress and bald white head made him the most
conspicuous figure of the group. He was an ecclesiastic: he was Pere
Silas. Do not fancy, reader, that there was any inconsistency in the
priest's presence at this fete. This was not considered a show of
Vanity Fair, but a commemoration of patriotic sacrifice. The Church
patronised it, even with ostentation. There were troops of priests in
the park that night.

Pere Silas stooped over the seat with its single occupant, the rustic
bench and that which sat upon it: a strange mass it was--bearing no
shape, yet magnificent. You saw, indeed, the outline of a face, and
features, but these were so cadaverous and so strangely placed, you
could almost have fancied a head severed from its trunk, and flung at
random on a pile of rich merchandise. The distant lamp-rays