is admission, this Monsieur. It belonged to Madame his
mother. Behold!"

He held the watch above his head, and dashed it with insane fury on the
ground, and bidding the gaoler see to his prisoner, rushed away to the
court below.

The prisoner needed some attention. Weakness and fasting and horror had
overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay senseless
by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine the gaoler (a
weak-minded man, whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him with
indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with
half-suppressed pity when he had gone. The place where he lay was a hall
or passage in the prison, into which several cells opened, and a number
of the prisoners were gathered together at one end of it. One of them
had watched the proceedings of the Jacobin and his victim with profound
interest, and now advanced to where the poor youth lay. He was a priest,
and though thirteen years had passed over his head since we saw him in
the chateau, and though toil and suffering and anxiety had added the
traces of as many more: yet it would not have been difficult to
recognize the towering height, the candid face, and finally the large
thumb in the little book of ----, Monsieur the Preceptor, who had years
ago exchanged his old position for a parochial cure. He strode up to the
gaoler (whose head came a little above the priest's elbow), and drawing
him aside, asked with his old abruptness, "Who is this?"

"It is the Vicomte de B----. I know his face. He has escaped the
commissaires for some days."

"I thought so. Is his name on the registers?"

"No. He escaped arrest, and has just been brought in as you saw."

"Antoine," said the Priest, in a low voice, and with a gaze that seemed
to pierce the soul of the weak little gaoler; "Antoine, when you were a
shoemaker in the Rue de la Croix, in two or three hard winters I think
you found me a friend."

"Oh! Monsieur le Cure," said Antoine, writhing; "if Monsieur le Cure
would believe that if I could save his life! but--"

"Pshaw!" said the Priest, "it is not for myself, but for this boy. You
must save him, Antoine. Hear me, you _must_. Take him now to one of the
lower cells and hide him. You risk nothing. His name is not on the
prison register. He will not be called, he will not be missed; that
fanatic will think that he has perished with the rest of us;" (Antoine
shuddered, though the priest did not move a muscle;) "