d up with extreme physical
exhaustion.

Next morning his man-servant brought him the news.

The city had been declared to be in a state of siege; the Assembly had
been dissolved; and a number of the representatives of the people had
been imprisoned at Mazas. Public affairs had assumed to his mind an
utterly unimportant aspect, so deeply preoccupied was he by his private
troubles.

He wrote to several tradesmen countermanding various orders which he had
given for the purchase of articles in connection with his projected
marriage, which now appeared to him in the light of a rather mean
speculation; and he execrated Madame Dambreuse, because, owing to her,
he had been very near perpetrating a vile action. He had forgotten the
Marechale, and did not even bother himself about Madame Arnoux--absorbed
only in one thought--lost amid the wreck of his dreams, sick at heart,
full of grief and disappointment, and in his hatred of the artificial
atmosphere wherein he had suffered so much, he longed for the freshness
of green fields, the repose of provincial life, a sleeping existence
spent beneath his natal roof in the midst of ingenuous hearts. At last,
when Wednesday evening arrived, he made his way out into the open air.

On the boulevard numerous groups had taken up their stand. From time to
time a patrol came and dispersed them; they gathered together again in
regular order behind it. They talked freely and in loud tones, made
chaffing remarks about the soldiers, without anything further happening.

"What! are they not going to fight?" said Frederick to a workman.

"They're not such fools as to get themselves killed for the well-off
people! Let them take care of themselves!"

And a gentleman muttered, as he glanced across at the inhabitants of the
faubourgs:

"Socialist rascals! If it were only possible, this time, to exterminate
them!"

Frederick could not, for the life of him, understand the necessity of so
much rancour and vituperative language. His feeling of disgust against
Paris was intensified by these occurrences, and two days later he set
out for Nogent by the first train.

The houses soon became lost to view; the country stretched out before
his gaze. Alone in his carriage, with his feet on the seat in front of
him, he pondered over the events of the last few days, and then on his
entire past. The recollection of Louise came back to his mind.

"She, indeed, loved me truly! I was wrong not to snatch at thi