ns littered the muddy thoroughfare.
But there was no excitement. Nothing more. Not even a quickened
pulse-beat was felt by those stolid men upon whose votes depended the
fate of the nation. Sulpice could not help marvelling at so much
indifference, but he reflected that it was thus throughout all France,
and that not only his name but the destiny of the nation was involved in
the struggle.

Moreover, at night, with what feverish transport he watched the returns
of the election as they reached the Palais de Justice, black with the
crowd, and filled with uproar! With what a fearfully fast-beating heart
he saw the rapidly swelling number of ballots cast for him! Dispatches
came, and pedestrians hurried in from the country, waving their
bulletins above their heads, and Sulpice heard on every lip the same
cry: "Vaudrey leads!"

Some cried bravo, while others clapped their hands. A crowd quickly
gathered about Vaudrey. It already seemed to him that he was lifted up
by a great wave and carried to a new world.

A friend seized him by the arm and drew him into a corner of the hall,
away from the others, and hurriedly said: "You know I am not one to ask
much of you, to ask anything of you, in fact. I merely reckon on a
receivership. That is easily done, eh? A mere nothing?"

Sulpice, whose feelings were overcome by this great popular
consecration, felt a kind of anger stir his heart against this
solicitor, who, in the triumph of a great popular cause, saw only a
means of self-advancement, of securing an appointment. The deputy--for
he was a deputy now, each commune adding its total to the Vaudrey
vote--was moved by a feeling of disgust.

The crowd followed him home that evening, shouting in triumph.

Amid the joy of victory, Sulpice felt the burden of the anxiety caused
by duties to be done: a treaty of peace to be signed, and what a peace!
Must he, alas! append his signature to a document devoted to the
dismemberment of his country? Far into the night he stood in reverie in
his chamber, his brow resting against the cold window-pane.

He retired to rest very late, and arose with the gray dawn of February,
but without having slept.

He looked across the street to a convent garden, with its square and
lozenge-shaped beds regularly arranged, its bare trees and box-wood
borders, that he had often gazed upon. Some nuns in their black robes
passed slowly across this cold and calm horizon that for many years had
also been the