pect of
such a career, "very well, be in the Place du Murier to-morrow at
half-past four; I will see old Sechard in the meantime; we will have a
deed of partnership drawn up, and the father and the son shall be
bound thereby, and delivered to the third person of the trinity
--Cointet, to wit."

To return to Lucien in Paris. On the morrow of the loss announced in
his letter, he obtained a _visa_ for his passport, bought a stout holly
stick, and went to the Rue d'Enfer to take a place in the little
market van, which took him as far as Longjumeau for half a franc. He
was going home to Angouleme. At the end of the first day's tramp he
slept in a cowshed, two leagues from Arpajon. He had come no farther
than Orleans before he was very weary, and almost ready to break down,
but there he found a boatman willing to bring him as far as Tours for
three francs, and food during the journey cost him but forty sous.
Five days of walking brought him from Tours to Poitiers, and left him
with but five francs in his pockets, but he summoned up all his
remaining strength for the journey before him.

He was overtaken by night in the open country, and had made up his
mind to sleep out of doors, when a traveling carriage passed by,
slowly climbing the hillside, and, all unknown to the postilion, the
occupants, and the servant, he managed to slip in among the luggage,
crouching in between two trunks lest he should be shaken off by the
jolting of the carriage--and so he slept.

He awoke with the sun shining into his eyes, and the sound of voices
in his ears. The carriage had come to a standstill. Looking about him,
he knew that he was at Mansle, the little town where he had waited for
Mme. de Bargeton eighteen months before, when his heart was full of
hope and love and joy. A group of post-boys eyed him curiously and
suspiciously, covered with dust as he was, wedged in among the
luggage. Lucien jumped down, but before he could speak two travelers
stepped out of the caleche, and the words died away on his lips; for
there stood the new Prefect of the Charente, Sixte du Chatelet, and
his wife, Louise de Negrepelisse.

"Chance gave us a traveling-companion, if we had but known!" said the
Countess. "Come in with us, monsieur."

Lucien gave the couple a distant bow and a half-humbled half-defiant
glance; then he turned away into a cross-country road in search of
some farmhouse, where he might make a breakfast on milk and bread, and
rest a