ing at me
hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. "I have sent for
you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is
my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been
reasonably well entertained?"

"_Monsieur mon oncle_," I said, bowing very low, "I am come at the
summons of the head of my family."

"It is well," he said. "Be seated. I should be glad to hear some
news--if that can be called news that is already twenty years old--of
how I have the pleasure to see you here."

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times
that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself
surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my
welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.

"That is soon told, _monseigneur_," said I. "I understand that I need
tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story
of the lost dog."

"You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it
is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be
advised," said he. "Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself."

"I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the
beginning," said I, with a bitter smile, "because my story begins at the
foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name
was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience,
to understand the extent of my misfortune. She----" I paused. "Enough
that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasserades, that she should
take charge of me, and by the favour of our gaolers I was suffered to
remain in the shelter of the _Abbaye_. That was my only refuge; there
was no corner of France that I could rest the sole of my foot upon
except the prison. Monsieur le Comte, you are as well aware as I can be
what kind of a life that was, and how swiftly death smote in that
society. I did not wait long before the name of Madame de Chasserades
succeeded to that of my mother on the list. She passed me on to Madame
de Noytot; she, in her turn, to Mademoiselle de Braye; and there were
others. I was the one thing permanent; they were all transient as
clouds; a day or two of their care, and then came the last farewell
and--somewhere far off in that roaring Paris that surrounded us--the
bloody scene. I was the cherished one, the last comfort, of these dying
women. I have been in pitched fights, m