amber in question was furnished with elegant simplicity, its only
ornaments consisting of a stand of modern arms and a range of shelves
furnished with a well-chosen collection of books. Yet a sudden frenzy,
or the hand of ungovernable rage, had reduced the quiet elegance which
ordinarily reigned to a scene of frantic disorder. Chairs, tables,
broken and overset; the carpet strewed with fragments of the crystal
lamp kept burning through the night; the wax-lights and gilded
chandelier which had contained them, lying around, gave manifest
evidence of a fearful scene.

M. d'Harville was about thirty years of age, with a fine, manly
countenance, whose usual expression was mild and prepossessing, but now
contracted, haggard, and livid. He had not changed his dress since the
preceding evening; his throat was bare, his waistcoat thrown open, and
on the torn and rumpled cambric of his shirt-front were drops of blood.
His rich, dark hair, which generally fell in curls around his face, now
hung in tangled wildness over his pale countenance. Wholly buried in
the misery of his own thoughts, with folded arms, drooping head, and
fixed, bloodshot eyes, M. d'Harville continued to pace his chamber;
then, stopping opposite his fireplace, in which, spite of the almost
unendurable severity of the frost of the past night, the fire had been
allowed to expire, he took from the marble mantelpiece the following
brief note, which he continued to read over and over with the most eager
attention by the wan, pale light of the cold glimmer of an early winter
morning:

"To-morrow, at one o'clock, your wife has appointed to meet
her favoured lover. Go to the Rue du Temple, No. 17, and you
will obtain every requisite confirmation of this intelligence.

"FROM ONE WHO PITIES YOU."

Whilst reading these words, perused, with such deep anguish and sickness
of heart, so many times through the long midnight hours, the blue, cold
lips of M. d'Harville appeared convulsively to spell each syllable of
this fatal _billet_.

At this moment the chamber door opened and a servant entered; the man
who now made his appearance was old, even gray-headed, but the
expression of his countenance was frank and honest. The noise of the man
entering disturbed not the marquis from his bitter contemplations; he
merely turned his head without altering his position, but still grasped
the letter in his clenched hands.

"What do