do something--a mere trifle--to
which she dissented. I grew eager, and at last insisted; when, looking
at me steadily for some seconds, she said,--

"Has it never occurred to you that over-zeal is apt to defeat itself,
from the very suspicion that it excites, that there may be a deeper
motive than that which meets the eye?"

The words smote me to the heart. They were the death-knell to all the
hope that had sustained me through my long struggle; and though I tried
to read them in various ways less wounding to my feelings, one terrible
signification surmounted all the others, and seemed to proclaim itself
the true meaning. What if it were really so? was the dreadful question
that now struck me. What if I had been the cause of her downfall?
The thought so stunned me that I sat powerless under the spell of its
terror,--a terror which has tempered every hour of life from that day to
this.

CHAPTER XLIII. A PASSAGE IN THE DRAMA

One of the noted characters about Paris at this time was a certain
Captain Fleury; he called himself "Fleury de Montmartre." He had been,
it was said, on Bonaparte's staff in Egypt, but got into disgrace by
having taken Kleber's side, in the differences between the two generals.
Disgusted with the service, in which he saw no prospect of promotion,
he quitted the army and came to live in Paris, as some thousands live
there, no one can tell how or in what manner. His chief, if not only,
occupation seemed to be the frequenting of all the low gambling-houses,
where, however, he rarely was seen to play, but rather waited for the
good fortune which befell some other, with whom he either dined, or
succeeded in borrowing a few francs. Less reputable habits than even
these were likewise attributed to him: it was said that he often thrust
quarrels upon people at the tables, which he afterwards compromised
for money, many preferring to pay rather than risk an encounter with a
professed duellist.

In his threadbare military frock and shabby hat, with broken boots
and ragged gloves, he still maintained the semblance of his former
condition, for he was eminently good-looking, and, in gait and bearing,
every inch a soldier. I had made his acquaintance by an accident. I
happened to have let fall beside my chair a bank-note for one hundred
francs, one night at play. The waiter hurried after me to restore it,
just as I was descending the stairs with this Captain Fleury at my side.
I was not aware of my lo