orts and those of all like
him cannot ultimately succeed. But they will have a temporary triumph,
and the streets of Paris will run with blood! These men are rousing
terrible agencies. They are evoking the fiends of hunger and misery,
which will neither obey them nor lie down at their bidding."

"And the magicians who have summoned these foul fiends will prove their
earliest victims!" said Chateau-Renaud, in some excitement.

"Messieurs, listen a moment!" cried Beauchamp, rising. "Pardon me, but
this discussion must cease, at least here. It can lead to no good
result. As the conductor of a reform journal, I entirely differ with you
both. But let not political differences interfere with our personal
friendship. Come, come, old friends, let us forsake this place, redolent
with politics, having a very atmosphere of discussion, and repair to the
Chambers, taking Very's on our way."

"Agreed!" cried the Deputy and the Secretary, and the three left the
journalist's sanctum arm in arm.

CHAPTER V.

EDMOND DANTES, DEPUTY FROM MARSEILLES.

Beauchamp, Lucien Debray and Chateau-Renaud were not the only persons
puzzled with regard to the enigmatical M. Dantes; all Paris was more or
less bothered about him; his entire career prior to his appearance at
the capital as the Deputy from Marseilles seemed shrouded in
impenetrable mystery, and this was the more galling to the curious
Parisians as his wonderful oratorical powers and his intense
republicanism rendered him the cynosure of all eyes and made him the
sensation of the hour. The Government had instituted investigations
concerning him, but without result; even in Marseilles his antecedents
were unknown; he had come there from the east utterly unheralded,
attended only by a black servant, and bringing with him his son and
daughter, but almost immediately he had plunged into politics, winning
his way to the front with startling rapidity. From the first he had
ardently espoused the cause of the working people, and such was his
personal magnetism that he had made hosts of admirers, and had been
chosen Deputy with hardly a dissenting voice. Some of the inhabitants of
Marseilles, indeed, remembered a youthful sailor named Edmond Dantes,
but they asserted that he had been dead many years, and that the Deputy
was unlike him in every particular.

As the young men passed the Theatre Francais, on their way to the
Chamber of Deputies, after a glass of sherry and a biscuit at Ve