stripes lashed then, laugh triumphant in Paris to-day! The satirist, and
the poet, and the prophet strain their voices in vain as the crowds rush
on; they are drowned in the chorus of mad sins and sweet falsehoods! O
God! the waste of hope, the waste of travail, the waste of pure desire,
the waste of high ambitions!--nothing endures but the wellspring of lies
that ever rises afresh, and the bay-tree of sin that is green, and
stately, and deathless!"

* * *

He himself went onward through the valley, through the deep belt of the
woods, through the avenues of the park. The whole front of the antique
building was lighted, and the painted oriels gleamed ruby, and amber,
and soft brown, in the dusky evening, through the green screen of
foliage.

The fragrance of the orange alleys, and of the acres of flowers, was
heavy on the air; there was the sound of music borne down the low
southerly wind; here and there through the boughs was the dainty glisten
of gliding silks:--it was such a scene as once belonged to the terraces
and gardens of Versailles.

From beyond the myrtle fence and gilded railings which severed the park
from the pleasaunce, enough could be seen, enough heard, of the
brilliant revelry within to tell of its extravagance, and its elegance,
in the radiance that streamed from all the illumined avenues.

He stood and looked long; hearing the faint echo of the music, seeing
the effulgence of the light through the dark myrtle barrier.

A very old crippled peasant, searching in the grass for truffles, with a
little dog, stole timidly up and looked too.

"How can it feel, to live like _that?_" he asked, in a wistful,
tremulous voice.

Tricotrin did not hear: his hand was grasped on one of the gilded rails
with a nervous force as from bodily pain.

The old truffle-gatherer, with his little white dog panting at his feet,
crossed himself as he peered through the myrtle screen.

"God!" he muttered; "how strange it seems that people are there who
never once knew what it was to want bread, and to find it nowhere,
though the lands all teemed with harvest! They never feel hungry, or
cold, or hot, or tired, or thirsty: they never feel their bones ache,
and their throat parch, and their entrails gnaw! These people ought not
to get to heaven--they have it on earth!"

Tricotrin heard at last: he turned his head and looked down on the old
man's careworn, hollow face.

"'Verily they have their reward