from the leaden sky; and Amedee, stupefied with grief, felt a strange
sensation of emptiness, as if somebody had taken away his heart.

When he entered his room, the sight of his furniture, his engravings,
his books on their shelves, and his table covered with its papers
distressed him. His long evenings of study near this lamp, the long
hours of thought over some difficult work, the austere and cheerless
year that he had lived there, all had been dedicated to Maria. It was
in order to obtain her some day, that he had labored so assiduously
and obstinately! And now the frivolous and guilty child was doubtless
weeping for joy in Maurice's arms, her husband to-morrow?

Seated before his table, with his head buried in his hands, Amedee sank
into the depths of melancholy. His life seemed such a failure, his fate
so disastrous, his future so gloomy, he felt so discouraged and lonely,
that for the moment the courage to live deserted him. It seemed to him
that an invisible hand touched him upon the shoulder with compassion,
and he had at once a desire and a fear to turn around and look; for he
knew very well that this hand was that of the dead. He did not fancy it
under the hideous aspect of a skeleton, but as a calm, sad, but yet very
sweet face which drew him against its breast with a mother's tenderness,
and made him and his grief sleep--a sleep without dreams, profound and
eternal. Suddenly he turned around and uttered a frightful cry. For
a moment he thought he saw, extended at his feet, and still holding a
razor in his hand, the dead body of his unhappy father, a horrible wound
in his throat, and his thin gray hair in a pool of blood!

He was still trembling with this frightful hallucination when somebody
knocked at his door. It was the concierge, who brought him two letters.

The first was stamped with the celebrated name:

"Comedie Francaise, 1680." The manager announced in the most gracious
terms that he had read with the keenest pleasure his drama in verse,
entitled L'Atelier, and he hoped that the reading committee would accept
this work.

"Too late!" thought the young poet, as he tore open the other envelope.

This second letter bore the address of a Paris notary, and informed M.
Amedee Violette that M. Isidore Gaufre had died without leaving a will,
and that, as nephew of the defunct, he would receive a part of the
estate, still difficult to appraise, but which would not be less than
two hundred and fifty or