is before me. He was much thinner than when
I last saw him, and his dress and appearance all betokened far less of
care and attention.

"Are these your quarters?" said he, entering and throwing a cautious
look about. "Are you alone here?"

"Yes," said I; "perfectly."

"You expect no one?"

"Not any," said I, again, still more surprised at the agitation of his
manner, and the evident degree of anxiety he labored under.

"Thank Heaven!" said he, drawing a deep sigh as he threw himself on my
little camp-bed, and covered his face with his hands.

Seeing that something weighed heavily on him, I half feared to interfere
with the current of his thoughts, and merely drew my chair and sat down
beside him.

"I say, Burke, mon cher, have you any wine? Let me have a glass or
two, for save some galette, and that not the best either, I have tasted
nothing these last twenty-four hours."

I soon set before him the contents of my humble larder, and in a few
moments he rallied a good deal, and looking up with a smile said,--

"I think you have been cultivating your education as gourmand since I
saw you; that pasty is worthy our friend in the Palais Royal. Well, and
how have you been since we met?"

"Let me rather ask yow," said I, "You are not looking so well as the
last time I saw you. Have you been ill?"

"Ill! no, not ill. Yet I can't say so; for I have suffered a good deal,
too. No, my friend; I have had much to harass and distress me. I
have been travelling, too, long distances and weary ones,--met some
disappointments; and altogether the world has not gone so well with me
as I think it ought. And now of you,--what of yourself?"

"Alas!" said I, "if you have met much to annoy, I have only lived a dull
life of daily monotony. If it has had little to distress, there is fully
as little to cheer; and I half suspect the fine illusions I used to
picture to myself of a soldier's career had very little connection with
reality."

As De Beauvais seemed to listen with more attention than such a theme
would naturally call for, I gradually was drawn into a picture of my
barrack life, in which I dwelt at length on my own solitary position,
and the want of that companionship which formed the chief charm of my
schoolboy life. To all this he paid a marked attention,--now questioning
me on some unexplained point; now agreeing with me in what I said by a
word or a gesture.

"And do you know, Burke," said he, interrupting me in my des