er, at the end of which looms the guillotine or the pistol-snap of
the suicide. All who fall on the pavement of Paris rebound against these
yellow-gray walls, on which a philanthropist who was not a speculator
might read a justification of the numerous suicides complained of by
hypocritical writers who are incapable of taking a step to prevent
them--for that justification is written in that ante-room, like a
preface to the dramas of the Morgue, or to those enacted on the Place de
la Greve.

At this moment Colonel Chabert was sitting among these men--men with
coarse faces, clothed in the horrible livery of misery, and silent at
intervals, or talking in a low tone, for three gendarmes on duty paced
to and fro, their sabres clattering on the floor.

"Do you recognize me?" said Derville to the old man, standing in front
of him.

"Yes, sir," said Chabert, rising.

"If you are an honest man," Derville went on in an undertone, "how could
you remain in my debt?"

The old soldier blushed as a young girl might when accused by her mother
of a clandestine love affair.

"What! Madame Ferraud has not paid you?" cried he in a loud voice.

"Paid me?" said Derville. "She wrote to me that you were a swindler."

The Colonel cast up his eyes in a sublime impulse of horror and
imprecation, as if to call heaven to witness to this fresh subterfuge.

"Monsieur," said he, in a voice that was calm by sheer huskiness, "get
the gendarmes to allow me to go into the lock-up, and I will sign an
order which will certainly be honored."

At a word from Derville to the sergeant he was allowed to take his
client into the room, where Hyacinthe wrote a few lines, and addressed
them to the Comtesse Ferraud.

"Send her that," said the soldier, "and you will be paid your costs and
the money you advanced. Believe me, monsieur, if I have not shown
you the gratitude I owe you for your kind offices, it is not the less
there," and he laid his hand on his heart. "Yes, it is there, deep and
sincere. But what can the unfortunate do? They live, and that is all."

"What!" said Derville. "Did you not stipulate for an allowance?"

"Do not speak of it!" cried the old man. "You cannot conceive how deep
my contempt is for the outside life to which most men cling. I was
suddenly attacked by a sickness--disgust of humanity. When I think
that Napoleon is at Saint-Helena, everything on earth is a matter of
indifference to me. I can no longer be a soldier; that is