ink of this; such a sentiment as love, such a word as marriage,
were misplaced in his heart, and on his lips. Now for the first time did
I truly feel what it was to be poor; now did the sacrifice I had made
in casting from me the means of living put on a new aspect; instead of
a correct, just, honourable act, it seemed a deed at once light and
fanatical; I took several turns in my room, under the goading influence
of most poignant remorse; I walked a quarter of an hour from the wall to
the window; and at the window, self-reproach seemed to face me; at the
wall, self-disdain: all at once out spoke Conscience:--

"Down, stupid tormenters!" cried she; "the man has done his duty;
you shall not bait him thus by thoughts of what might have been; he
relinquished a temporary and contingent good to avoid a permanent and
certain evil he did well. Let him reflect now, and when your blinding
dust and deafening hum subside, he will discover a path."

I sat down; I propped my forehead on both my hands; I thought and
thought an hour-two hours; vainly. I seemed like one sealed in a
subterranean vault, who gazes at utter blackness; at blackness ensured
by yard-thick stone walls around, and by piles of building above,
expecting light to penetrate through granite, and through cement firm
as granite. But there are chinks, or there may be chinks, in the
best adjusted masonry; there was a chink in my cavernous cell; for,
eventually, I saw, or seemed to see, a ray--pallid, indeed, and cold,
and doubtful, but still a ray, for it showed that narrow path which
conscience had promised after two, three hours' torturing research in
brain and memory, I disinterred certain remains of circumstances, and
conceived a hope that by putting them together an expedient might be
framed, and a resource discovered. The circumstances were briefly these:

Some three months ago M. Pelet had, on the occasion of his fete, given
the boys a treat, which treat consisted in a party of pleasure to a
certain place of public resort in the outskirts of Brussels, of which
I do not at this moment remember the name, but near it were several of
those lakelets called etangs; and there was one etang, larger than the
rest, where on holidays people were accustomed to amuse themselves by
rowing round it in little boats. The boys having eaten an unlimited
quantity of "gaufres," and drank several bottles of Louvain beer, amid
the shades of a garden made and provided for such crams, p