a lowly station to
the realms of beauty, fame and wealth. You will yet cull the
splendid blossom that fascinates you, at least I hope so. But how
much better had you loved a simple work-girl, whose affections
you could have beguiled by offering her a penn'orth of fried
potatoes and a seat among the gods to see a melodrama. I fear you
are a dupe of men's opinion, for one woman is not very different
from another, and it is opinion, that mistress of the world, and
nothing else, which sets a high price on some and a low one on
others. Do you profit, my young and very dear friend, by the
experience afforded me by the vicissitudes of fortune, which
are such that I am obliged at this present moment to borrow of
you the modest sum of two and a half francs."

So spake the Marquis Tudesco.

XIV

Jean had trudged afoot up the hill of Bellevue. Evening was falling.
The village street ran upwards between low walls, brambles and
thistles lining the roadway on either side. In front the woods
melted into a far-off blue haze; below him stretched the city,
with its river, its roofs, its towers and domes, the vast, smoky
town which had kindled Servien's aspirations at the flaring lights
of its theatres and nurtured his feverish longings in the dust
of its streets. In the west a broad streak of purple lay between
heaven and earth. A sweet sense of peace descended on the landscape
as the first stars twinkled faintly in the sky. But it was not
peace Jean Servien had come to find.

A few more paces on the stony high road and there stood the gate
festooned with the tendrils of a wild vine, just as it had been
described to him.

He gazed long, in a trance of adoration. Peering through the
bars, between the sombre boughs of a Judas tree, he saw a pretty
little white house with a flight of stone steps before the front
door, flanked by two blue vases. Everything was still, nobody
at the windows, nobody stirring on the gravel of the drive; not
a voice, not a whisper, not a footfall. And yet, after a long,
long look, he turned away almost happy, his heart filled with
satisfaction.

He waited under the old walnut trees of the avenue till the windows
lighted up one by one in the darkness, and then retraced his
steps. As he passed the railway station, to which people were
hurrying to catch an incoming train, he saw amid the confusion
a tall woman in a mantilla kiss a young girl who was taking her
leave. The pale face under the mantill