at this moment is to see his cousin for the last time.
Perhaps his note to you has some reference to it."

I took the letter with a trembling hand,--a fear of something undefined
was over me,--and tearing it open, read as follows:--

Dear Friend,--The Abbe, d'Ervan will deliver this into your
hands, and if you wish it, explain the reason of the request
it contains,--which is simply that you will afford me the
shelter of your quarters for one day in the park at
Versailles. I know the difficulty of your position; and if
any other means under heaven presented itself, I should not
ask the favor, which, although I pledge my honor not to
abuse, I shall value as the dearest a whole life's gratitude
can repay. My heart tells me that you will not refuse the
last wish of one you will never see after this meeting. I
shall wait at the gate below the Trianon at eleven o'clock
on Friday night, when you can pass me through the sentries.

Yours, ever and devoted,

Henri De Beauvais.

"The thing is impossible," said I, laying down the letter on the table,
and staring over at D'Ervan.

"No more so, dear friend, than what you have done for me this evening,
and which, I need not tell you, involves no risk whatever. Here am I
now, without pass or countersign, your guest,--the partaker of as good a
supper and as excellent a glass of wine as man need care for. In an hour
hence,--say two at most,--I shall be on my way over to St. Cloud. Who
is, then, I ask you, to be the wiser? You'll not put me down in the
night report. Don't start: I repeat it, you can't do it, for I had no
countersign to pass through; and as the Consul reads these sheets every
morning, you are not going to lose your commission for the sake of an
absurd punctilio that nobody on earth will thank you for. Come, come, my
worthy lieutenant, these same excellent scruples of yours savor far more
of the scholar at the rigid old Polytechnique than the young officer of
hussars. Help me to that ortolan there, and pass the bottle. There! a
bumper of such a vintage is a good reward for so much talking."

While the abbe, continued to exert himself, by many a flippant remark
and many a smart anecdote, to dissipate the gloom that now fell over
my spirits, I grew only more and more silent. The one false step I had
taken already presented itself before me as the precedent for further
wrong, and I knew not what cour