he Saviour.)

He turned it over, he turned it back again; there was no other mark;
there was nothing more; and Monsieur the Viscount did not conceal it
from himself that he was disappointed. How could it be otherwise? He had
been bred in ease and luxury, and surrounded with everything that could
make life beautiful; while ugliness, and want, and sickness, and all
that make life miserable, had been kept, as far as they can be kept,
from the precincts of the beautiful chateau which was his home. What
were the _consolations_ of religion to him? They are offered to those,
(and to those only) who need them. They were to Monsieur the Viscount
what the Crucified Christ was to the Greeks of old--foolishness.

He put the paper in his pocket and lay down again, feeling it the
crowning disappointment of what he had lately suffered. Presently,
Antoine came with some food; it was not dainty, but Monsieur the
Viscount devoured it like a famished hound, and then made inquiries as
to how he came and how long he had been there. When the gaoler began to
describe him whom he called the Cure, Monsieur the Viscount's attention
quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest
that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier
and younger days. The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old
tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes. With French
excitability, he laughed and wept alternately.

"As burly as ever, you say? The little book? I remember it, it was his
breviary. Ah! it is he. It is Monsieur the Preceptor, whom I have not
seen for years. Take me to him, bring him here, let me see him!"

But Monsieur the Preceptor was in Paradise.

That first night of Monsieur the Viscount's imprisonment was a terrible
one. The bitter chill of a Parisian autumn, the gnawings of
half-satisfied hunger, the thick walls that shut out all hope of escape
but did not exclude those fearful cries that lasted with few intervals
throughout the night, made it like some hideous dream. At last the
morning broke; at half-past two o'clock, some members of the _commune_
presented themselves in the hall of the National Assembly with the
significant announcement: "The prisons are empty!" and Antoine, who had
been quaking for hours, took courage, and went with a half loaf of bread
and a pitcher of water to the cell that was not "empty." He found his
prisoner struggling with a knot of white ribbon, which he was tryi