an's gear, like a son of the
plains, he used to sleep amongst the tools of his trade, in a litter
of rusty scrap-iron, with a portable forge at his head, under the
work-bench sustaining his grimy mosquito-net.

Now and then I would bring him a few candle ends saved from the scant
supply of the manager's house. He was very thankful for these. He did
not like to lie awake in the dark, he confessed. He complained that
sleep fled from him. "Le sommeil me fuit," he declared, with his
habitual air of subdued stoicism, which made him sympathetic and
touching. I made it clear to him that I did not attach undue importance
to the fact of his having been a convict.

Thus it came about that one evening he was led to talk about himself.
As one of the bits of candle on the edge of the bench burned down to the
end, he hastened to light another.

He had done his military service in a provincial garrison and returned
to Paris to follow his trade. It was a well-paid one. He told me with
some pride that in a short time he was earning no less than ten francs a
day. He was thinking of setting up for himself by and by and of getting
married.

Here he sighed deeply and paused. Then with a return to his stoical
note:

"It seems I did not know enough about myself."

On his twenty-fifth birthday two of his friends in the repairing shop
where he worked proposed to stand him a dinner. He was immensely touched
by this attention.

"I was a steady man," he remarked, "but I am not less sociable than any
other body."

The entertainment came off in a little cafe on the Boulevard de la
Chapelle. At dinner they drank some special wine. It was excellent.
Everything was excellent; and the world--in his own words--seemed a very
good place to live in. He had good prospects, some little money laid by,
and the affection of two excellent friends. He offered to pay for all
the drinks after dinner, which was only proper on his part.

They drank more wine; they drank liqueurs, cognac, beer, then more
liqueurs and more cognac. Two strangers sitting at the next table looked
at him, he said, with so much friendliness, that he invited them to join
the party.

He had never drunk so much in his life. His elation was extreme, and so
pleasurable that whenever it flagged he hastened to order more drinks.

"It seemed to me," he said, in his quiet tone and looking on the ground
in the gloomy shed full of shadows, "that I was on the point of just
attaining a gre