than a spy for the First Consul; and as
for Gabriac, to whom we all trusted, he would have been even worse than
a spy, if his villany had succeeded."

"You knew him, then, sir?" asked I.

"Knew him! Parbleu! I did know him; and better, too, than most did! I
always said he would play the traitor,--not to one, but to every cause.
He was false to all, sir," said he, with increasing bitterness,--"to his
King; to that King's enemies; to the Convention; to the 'Emigration;' to
the nobles; to the people: false everywhere and to every one! False to
her who bore his name, and to her whom he led away to ruin,--that poor
girl, whose father's chivalrous loyalty alone might have protected
her--How do you call him?--the Marquis de Bresinart? No, not him; I mean
that old loyalist leader who lived near Valence."

"Not the Marquis de Nipernois?" said I, in trembling eagerness.

"The same; the Marquis de Nipernois, to whose daughter he was once
betrothed, and whose fair fame and name he has tarnished forever!"

"You do not mean that Gabriac was the seducer of Madame de Bertin?" said
I.

"The world knows it as well as I do; and although one alone ever dared
to deny it, and branded the tale with the epithet of base scandal, she
came at last to see its truth; and her broken heart was the last of his
triumphs!"

"You speak of the Countess,--his wife?"

He grasped my hand within one of his own, and pressed the other across
his eyes, unable to speak, through emotion. Nor were my feelings less
moved. What a terrible revelation was this! Misfortune upon misfortune,
and De Gabriac the cause of all!

For a moment I thought of declaring myself to be his old pupil, and the
child who had called that dear Comtesse "mother;" but the morbid shame
with which I remembered what I then was, stopped me, and I was silent.

"You know, of course, whither she went from this, and what became of
her?" asked I, anxiously.

"Yes. I had two letters from her,--at long intervals, though; the last,
when about to sail for Halifax--"

"For Halifax!--gone to America?"

"Even so. She said that the Old World had been long unkind to her, and
that she would try the New! and then as their only friend in Hamburg was
dead--"

"They were at Hamburg!--you did not say that?" said I.

"Yes, to be sure. Monsieur Raper, who was a worthy, good man, and a
smart scholar besides, had obtained the place of correspondence clerk in
a rich mercantile house in that city, whe