a result of your paternal
affection for me.

"And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

"Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
admiration.

"LUCIEN."

A little before one in the morning, when the men came to fetch away the
body, they found Jacques Collin kneeling by the bed, the letter on the
floor, dropped, no doubt, as a suicide drops the pistol that has shot
him; but the unhappy man still held Lucien's hand between his own, and
was praying to God.

On seeing this man, the porters paused for a moment, for he looked like
one of those stone images, kneeling to all eternity on a mediaeval tomb,
the work of some stone-carver's genius. The sham priest, with eyes
as bright as a tiger's, but stiffened into supernatural rigidity, so
impressed the men that they gently bid him rise.

"Why?" he asked mildly. The audacious _Trompe-la-Mort_ was as meek as a
child.

The governor pointed him out to Monsieur de Chargeboeuf; and he,
respecting such grief, and believing that Jacques Collin was indeed
the priest he called himself, explained the orders given by Monsieur de
Granville with regard to the funeral service and arrangements, showing
that it was absolutely necessary that the body should be transferred
to Lucien's lodgings, Quai Malaquais, where the priests were waiting to
watch by it for the rest of the night.

"It is worthy of that gentleman's well-known magnanimity," said Jacques
Collin sadly. "Tell him, monsieur, that he may rely on my gratitude.
Yes, I am in a position to do him great service. Do not forget these
words; they are of the utmost importance to him.

"Oh, monsieur! strange changes come over a man's spirit when for seven
hours he has wept over such a son as he----And I shall see him no more!"

After gazing once more at Lucien with an expression of a mother bereft
of her child's remains, Jacques Collin sank in a heap. As he saw
Lucien's body carried away