my only real
grief. After all," he added with a gesture of childish simplicity, "it
is better to enjoy luxury of feeling than of dress. For my part, I fear
nobody's contempt."

And the Colonel sat down on his bench again.

Derville went away. On returning to his office, he sent Godeschal, at
that time his second clerk, to the Comtesse Ferraud, who, on reading the
note, at once paid the sum due to Comte Chabert's lawyer.

In 1840, towards the end of June, Godeschal, now himself an attorney,
went to Ris with Derville, to whom he had succeeded. When they reached
the avenue leading from the highroad to Bicetre, they saw, under one
of the elm-trees by the wayside, one of those old, broken, and hoary
paupers who have earned the Marshal's staff among beggars by living on
at Bicetre as poor women live on at la Salpetriere. This man, one of
the two thousand poor creatures who are lodged in the infirmary for the
aged, was seated on a corner-stone, and seemed to have concentrated all
his intelligence on an operation well known to these pensioners, which
consists in drying their snuffy pocket-handkerchiefs in the sun, perhaps
to save washing them. This old man had an attractive countenance. He was
dressed in a reddish cloth wrapper-coat which the work-house affords to
its inmates, a sort of horrible livery.

"I say, Derville," said Godeschal to his traveling companion, "look at
that old fellow. Isn't he like those grotesque carved figures we get
from Germany? And it is alive, perhaps it is happy."

Derville looked at the poor man through his eyeglass, and with a little
exclamation of surprise he said:

"That old man, my dear fellow, is a whole poem, or, as the romantics
say, a drama.--Did you ever meet the Comtesse Ferraud?"

"Yes; she is a clever woman, and agreeable; but rather too pious," said
Godeschal.

"That old Bicetre pauper is her lawful husband, Comte Chabert, the
old Colonel. She has had him sent here, no doubt. And if he is in
this workhouse instead of living in a mansion, it is solely because he
reminded the pretty Countess that he had taken her, like a hackney cab,
on the street. I can remember now the tiger's glare she shot at him at
that moment."

This opening having excited Godeschal's curiosity, Derville related the
story here told.

Two days later, on Monday morning, as they returned to Paris, the two
friends looked again at Bicetre, and Derville proposed that they should
call on Colonel Chabert.