st his neighbor; and to hear them you would say that never
was there a subject more suggestive of drollery than the one of suicide
and sudden death.

And thus was it ever. No event, however dreadful,--no circumstance,
however shocking,--could do more than momentarily affect those whose
life possessed no security, was governed by no principle. Levity and
unbelief--unbelief that extended not only to matters of religion, but
actually penetrated every relation of life, rendering them sceptical of
friendship, love, truth, honor, and charity--were the impulses under
which they lived; and they would have laughed him to scorn who should
have attempted to establish another code of acting or thinking. Such
feelings, if they made them but little suited to all the habits and
charities of life, certainly rendered them most indifferent to death;
and much of that courage so much lauded and admired on the scaffold
had no other source than in the headlong recklessness the prison had
inculcated,--the indifference to everything, where everything was
questionable and doubtful.

I struggled powerfully against the taint of such a consuming malady.
I bethought me of my boyhood and its early purpose,--of him who first
stirred my soul to ambition,--and asked myself, what would he have
thought of me had I yielded to such a trial as this? I pictured before
me a career when such devotion as I felt, aided by a stout heart, must
win its way to honor; and when roused to thought, these low, depressing
dreams, these dark hours of doubt and despair, vanished before it. But
gradually my health gave way, my lethargic apathy increased upon me, the
gloomy walls of my cell had thrown their shadow over my spirit, and I
sank into a state of moping indifference in which I scarcely marked the
change of day and night; and felt at length that had the sentence been
pronounced which condemned me for life to the walls of the Temple, I
could have heard it without emotion.

"Come, sous-lieutenant, it's your turn now!" said the turnkey, entering
my cell one morning, where I sat alone at breakfast; "I have just
received the orders for your appearance."

"How! where?" said I, scarcely able to do more than guess at the meaning
of his words; "before the prefet, is it?"

"No, no; a very different affair, indeed. You are summoned with the
_Chouan_ prisoners to appear at the Palais de Justice."

"The Palais!" said I, as for the first time for weeks past a sentiment
of f