sing as were his agonies, and diverting as was
his despair. I had either the presence of mind, or the feebleness of
pulse, to look and listen;--the art has succeeded in higher places than
prisons.

Yet all was not sentimentality with him. He was an honest and
high-spirited man in the main. He questioned me--and no question could
then be a bolder one at the time--in what manner he could best serve me.
My answer was immediate--"Find out the commercial house of Elnathan, and
tell the head of the family that I am here." The service was done, and I
received for answer, on my friend's return from his ride to the Rue
Vivienne--"That the firm kept no account with any person of my name; and
that they had no desire to have any further application on the subject."
The doctor, too, had been received with such gathering of black brows,
and such murmurs between indignation and astonishment; that if Rabbi
Elnathan had not been deemed altogether beneath the vengeance of "an
officer in the service of the Republic," the consequence would have been
a proposal to choose his own time to be run through the body in the
Champs Elysees.

It was late when my ambassador had returned, and I had begun to feel
some alarm for his peril by other than the shafts of Cupid in the
rashness of exposing him to the jealous eye of his government, or
perhaps to the denunciation of the Jewish firm, who, to screen
themselves, might hasten with the intelligence to the first
police-office. And I had an uneasy walk of a couple of hours, gazing
from the ramparts, for every movement in the direction of the capital.
The night was calm, and the glow of the lamps in the streets strikingly
marked their outline; when on a sudden the sky was filled with flame of
every colour, shot up in all directions, the cannon round the barriers
began to roar, and Montmartre was in a perpetual blaze. It was plain
that some extraordinary event had occurred; but whether this were the
fall of the triumvirate or of their enemies, a new revolution or a new
monarch, was beyond our knowledge; we were all hermetically sealed up in
Vincennes; and if Paris had been buried in its own catacombs at the
moment, the news would have been doled out to us only in the segments
which suited the dignity of the governor.

But Pantoufle for once was popular in the fortress. If he had brought
nothing to raise my spirits, his tidings threw the garrison into
ecstasy. The Republic "had gained a great victory,"