es about him; perhaps he has simply gone back to the
factory."

Sigismond shook his head. Ah! if he had said all that he thought!

"Return to the house, sister. I will go and see."

And with the old "I haf no gonfidence" he rushed away like a hurricane,
his white mane standing even more erect than usual.

At that hour, on the road near the fortifications, was an endless
procession of soldiers and market-gardeners, guard-mounting, officers'
horses out for exercise, sutlers with their paraphernalia, all the bustle
and activity that is seen in the morning in the neighborhood of forts.
Planus was striding along amid the tumult, when suddenly he stopped. At
the foot of the bank, on the left, in front of a small, square building,
with the inscription.

CITY OF PARIS,
ENTRANCE TO THE QUARRIES,

On the rough plaster, he saw a crowd assembled, and soldiers' and
custom-house officers' uniforms, mingled with the shabby, dirty blouses
of barracks-loafers. The old man instinctively approached. A customs
officer, seated on the stone step below a round postern with iron bars,
was talking with many gestures, as if he were acting out his narrative.

"He was where I am," he said. "He had hanged himself sitting, by pulling
with all his strength on the rope! It's clear that he had made up his
mind to die, for he had a razor in his pocket that he would have used in
case the rope had broken."

A voice in the crowd exclaimed: "Poor devil!" Then another, a tremulous
voice, choking with emotion, asked timidly:

"Is it quite certain that he's dead?"

Everybody looked at Planus and began to laugh.

"Well, here's a greenhorn," said the officer. "Don't I tell you that he
was all blue this morning, when we cut him down to take him to the
chasseurs' barracks!"

The barracks were not far away; and yet Sigismond Planus had the greatest
difficulty in the world in dragging himself so far. In vain did he say to
himself that suicides are of frequent occurrence in Paris, especially in
those regions; that not a day passes that a dead body is not found
somewhere along that line of fortifications, as upon the shores of a
tempestuous sea,--he could not escape the terrible presentiment that had
oppressed his heart since early morning.

"Ah! you have come to see the man that hanged himself," said the
quartermaster-sergeant at the door of the barracks. "See! there he is."

The body had been laid on a table supported by t