s chance
of happiness. Pooh! let us not think any more about it!"

Then, five minutes afterwards: "Who knows, after all? Why not, later?"

His reverie, like his eyes, wandered afar towards vague horizons.

"She was artless, a peasant girl, almost a savage; but so good!"

In proportion as he drew nearer to Nogent, her image drew closer to him.
As they were passing through the meadows of Sourdun, he saw her once
more in imagination under the poplar-trees, as in the old days, cutting
rushes on the edges of the pools. And now they had reached their
destination; he stepped out of the train.

Then he leaned with his elbows on the bridge, to gaze again at the isle
and the garden where they had walked together one sunshiny day, and the
dizzy sensation caused by travelling, together with the weakness
engendered by his recent emotions, arousing in his breast a sort of
exaltation, he said to himself:

"She has gone out, perhaps; suppose I were to go and meet her!"

The bell of Saint-Laurent was ringing, and in the square in front of the
church there was a crowd of poor people around an open carriage, the
only one in the district--the one which was always hired for weddings.
And all of a sudden, under the church-gate, accompanied by a number of
well-dressed persons in white cravats, a newly-married couple appeared.

He thought he must be labouring under some hallucination. But no! It
was, indeed, Louise! covered with a white veil which flowed from her red
hair down to her heels; and with her was no other than Deslauriers,
attired in a blue coat embroidered with silver--the costume of a
prefect.

How was this?

Frederick concealed himself at the corner of a house to let the
procession pass.

Shamefaced, vanquished, crushed, he retraced his steps to the
railway-station, and returned to Paris.

The cabman who drove him assured him that the barricades were erected
from the Chateau d'Eau to the Gymnase, and turned down the Faubourg
Saint-Martin. At the corner of the Rue de Provence, Frederick stepped
out in order to reach the boulevards.

It was five o'clock. A thin shower was falling. A number of citizens
blocked up the footpath close to the Opera House. The houses opposite
were closed. No one at any of the windows. All along the boulevard,
dragoons were galloping behind a row of wagons, leaning with drawn
swords over their horses; and the plumes of their helmets, and their
large white cloaks, rising up behind them, cou