l night was visible, he thought of his childhood, and of the last
years of his life.

No, Cecile would not marry him. In the first place, he was a mechanic;
secondly, his birth was illegitimate. It was the first time in his life
that this thought had weighed upon him, for Jack had not lived among
very scrupulous people. He had never heard his father's name mentioned,
and therefore rarely thought of him, being as unable to measure the
extent of his loss as a deaf mute is unable to realize the blessing of
the senses he lacks.

But now the question of his birth occupied him to the exclusion of all
others.

He had listened calmly to the name of his father when Charlotte told it;
but now he would like to learn from her every detail. Was he really a
marquis? Was he certainly dead? Had not his mother said this merely to
avoid the disclosure of a mortifying desertion? And if this father were
still alive, would he not be willing to give his name to his son? The
poor fellow was ignorant of the fact that a true woman's heart is more
moved by compassion than by all the vain distinctions of the world.

"I will write to my mother," he thought. But the questions he wished
to ask were so delicate and complicated, that he resolved to see her at
once, and have one of those earnest conversations where eyes do the work
of words, and where silence is as eloquent as speech. Unfortunately he
had no money for his railroad fare. "Pshaw!" he said, "I can go on foot.
I did it when I was eleven, and I can surely try it again." And he did
try it the next day; and if it seemed to him less long and less lonely
than it did before, it was far more sad.

Jack saw the spot where he had slept, the little gate at Villeneuve
Saint-George's, where he had been dropped by the kind couple from their
carriage, the pile of stones where the recumbent form of a man had so
terrified him, and he sighed to think that if the Jack of his youth
could suddenly rise from the dust of the highway, he would be more
afraid of the Jack of to-day than of any other dismal wanderer.

He reached Paris in the afternoon. A settled, cold rain was falling;
and pursuing the comparison that he had made of his souvenirs with the
present time, he recalled the glow of the sunset on that May evening
when his mother appeared to him, like the archangel Michael, wrapped in
glory, and chasing away the shades of night.

Instead of the little house at Aulnettes where Ida sang amid her roses