s of
gas-lamps and here and there, moving, luminous points that looked like
glow-worms. Vaudrey mechanically stopped a moment to contemplate the
scene.

That did not interest him, but something within him controlled him. He
continued to walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau. The
solitude of the Champs-Elysees pleased him. While passing before an
important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered.
Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green
shades, the lustres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red
and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they
were discussing the causes of his defeat and the success of Granet.

"They are speaking of me, in there! They are talking about my fall! He
is fallen! Fallen! Beaten!--They are laughing, they are making jokes!
There are some there who yesterday were asking me for places."

He continued on his way without quickening his pace; the deserted cafe
concerts, as melancholy-looking as empty stages, the wreaths of
suspended pearl-like lamps illuminated during the summer months but now
colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as
cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude
were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year's
mirth. And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his
bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been
lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of this silent corner.

Going on, he passed before the Elysee.

A _sergent de ville_ who was slowly pacing up and down in front of an
empty sentry-box, his two hands ensconced in the sleeves of his coat,
the hood of which he had turned up, cast a sidelong glance at him,
almost suspiciously, as if wondering what a prowler could want to do
there, at such an hour.

"He does not know whom he has looked at," he said. "And yesterday, only
yesterday, he would have saluted me subserviently!"

The windows of the Elysee facing the street were still lighted up and
Vaudrey thought that shadows were moving behind the white curtains.

"The President has not yet retired! He has probably received Granet! And
Warcolier!--Warcolier!"

Before the large door opening on Faubourg Saint-Honore, four lamps were
burning over the head of a Parisian guard on duty, with his musket on
his shoulder, the light shining on the leather of his shako. Some