as the secrecy he sought was for the sake, not of his own
memory, but that of her whom the world knew only as his honoured wife.
The conduct of Louise admits no such excuse; she dies as she had lived;
an Egotist. But, whatever the motives of the parents, what is the fate
of the deserted child? What revenge does the worldly opinion, which the
parents would escape for themselves, inflict on the innocent infant
to whom the bulk of their worldly possessions is to be clandestinely
conveyed? Would all the gold of Ophir be compensation enough for her?

Slowly De Mauleon roused himself, and turned from the solitary place
where he had been seated to a more crowded part of the ramparts. He
passed a group of young Moblots, with flowers wreathed round their
gun-barrels. "If," said one of them gaily, "Paris wants bread, it never
wants flowers." His companions laughed merrily, and burst out into a
scurrile song in ridicule of St. Trochu. Just then an obus fell a few
yards before the group. The sound only for a moment drowned the song,
but the splinters struck a man in a coarse, ragged dress, who had
stopped to listen to the singers. At his sharp cry, two men hastened
to his side: one was Victor de Mauleon; the other was a surgeon, who
quitted another group of idlers--National Guards--attracted by the
shriek that summoned his professional aid. The poor man was terribly
wounded. The surgeon, glancing at De Mauleon, shrugged his shoulders,
and muttered, "Past help!" The sufferer turned his haggard eyes on the
Vicomte, and gasped out, "M. de Mauleon?"

"That is my name," answered Victor, surprised, and not immediately
recognising the sufferer.

"Hist, Jean Lebeau!--look at me: you recollect me now,--Mart le Roux,
concierge to the Secret Council. Ay, I found out who you were long
ago--followed you home from the last meeting you broke up. But I did not
betray you, or you would have been murdered long since. Beware of
the old set--beware of--of--" Here his voice broke off into shrill
exclamations of pain. Curbing his last agonies with a powerful effort,
he faltered forth, "You owe me a service--see to the little one at
home--she is starving." The death-rale came on; in a few moments he was
no more.

Victor gave orders for the removal of the corpse, and hurried away. The
surgeon, who had changed countenance when he overheard the name in
which the dying man had addressed De Mauleon, gazed silently after De
Mauleon's retreating form, and