a mission s'annoncer au peuple que la
divinite n'existe pas? Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, "Discours," Mai 7,
1794.

(Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
that there is no God? What advantage find you in persuading man
that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)

It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His
apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called
an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely
removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the
law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the
people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on
the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats,
to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by
nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.

As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister,
savage, and yet timorous; the man's face was of an ashen paleness, and
the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed
him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he
thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just
quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but
some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now
stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed
a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre
and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay
an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over
the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant
was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. "Water," he moaned
feebly,--"water:--I parch,--I burn!" The intruder approached the bed,
bent over him, and took his hand. "Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!"
said the sufferer; "hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir,
I am poor,