his shame was
published.

Of Maritana all that he could learn was that she had left Venice without
again appearing in public; but in what direction none knew accurately.
Cashel justly surmised that she had not gone without seeing him once
more had it not been from the compulsion of others; and if he grieved
to think they were never to meet more, he felt a secret consolation on
reflecting how much of mutual shame and sorrow was spared them. Shame
was indeed the predominant emotion of his mind; shame for his now
sullied name--his character tarnished by the allegations of crime; and
shame for her, degraded to a _ballarina_.

Had fortune another reverse in store for him? Was there one cherished
hope still remaining? Had life one solitary spot to which he could now
direct his weary steps, and be at rest? The publicity which late events
had given to his name rendered him more timid and retiring than ever.
A morbid sense of modesty--a shrinking dread of the slights to which he
would be exposed in the world--made him shun all intercourse, and live a
life of utter seclusion.

Like all men who desire solitude, he soon discovered that it is alone
attainable in great cities. Where the great human tide runs full and
strong, the scattered wrecks are scarcely noticeable.

To Paris, therefore, he repaired; not to that brilliant Paris where
sensuality and vice costume themselves in all the brilliant hues derived
from the highest intellectual culture, but to the dark and gloomy Paris
which lies between the arms of the Seine,--"the Ile St. Louis." There,
amid the vestiges of an extinct feudalism, and the trials of a
present wretchedness, he passed his life in strict solitude. In a mean
apartment, whose only solace was the view of the river, with a few
books picked up on a neighboring stall, and the moving crowd beneath his
window to attract his wandering thoughts, he lived his lonely life. The
past alone occupied his mind; for the future he had neither care
nor interest, but of his bygone life he could dream for hours. These
memories he used to indulge each evening in a particular spot; it was an
old and ruinous stair which descended to the river, from a little wooden
platform, near where he lived. It had been long disused, and suffered to
fall into rot and decay. Here he sat, each night, watching the twinkling
lights that glittered along the river, and listening to the distant hum
of that great hive of pleasure that lay beyond it.