would give my life."

"At least they believe that, poor creatures!" said De Marsay; "but they
are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be beguiled by
a love-letter accompanied by such convincing accessories?"

This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, postman, on the following
day, about eight o'clock in the morning, to the porter of the Hotel
San-Real.

In order to be nearer to the field of action, De Marsay went and
breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pepiniere. At
two o'clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the
discomfiture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of
fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him,
Henri's coachman came to seek his master at Paul's house, and presented
to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking himself with his
master.

This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a
model for the part of Othello, if he had come across him. Never did any
African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion,
the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor,
and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of
the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture's, by
a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had
something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some
single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong to him.

He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk, from those
who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics, would paint
in the single phrase: _He was an unfortunate man_. From this phrase,
everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each
country. But who can best imagine his face--white and wrinkled, red at
the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow
scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat,
his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold
pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who
will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the
unfortunate man _in toto_, for he has still enough mirth to know the
extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis
XI. leading a man to the gallows.

"Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures?" said Henri.

"Faith