e the haunts of idlers, and
thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of
which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I
confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my
follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate."

"Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the
Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde,
on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you
said, pointing towards the walls of the Corps Legislatif, 'Paul, when
I once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First
Minister of France?'"

"Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to
the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle
loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You
became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not
diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out
for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt
which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this
hour. You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier."

"But," said Louvier, falteringly, "but since you refer to that
thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--"

"I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as
well as you did to assist me now to refute."

"If it be really a calumny."

"Heavens, man! could you ever doubt that?" cried De Mauleon, with heat;
"ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed
them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?"

"Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris
for months after you had disappeared. My mind was unsettled by the news
that awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited
Holland and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard
of your story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own
account. You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de
------'s jewels; and your friend M. de ----- never sold them to one
jeweller and obtained their substitutes in paste from another?"

The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an impulse of rage;
then reseating himself in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the
shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to himself that rage would be out
of place, replied