“How seldom we see those whom we love!  Circumstances take us far from them, and our soul tormented and attracted out of ourselves lives in a perpetual anguish.  I feel this sickness of absence.  I imagine myself wherever you are.  I follow your work with my eyes, or I listen to your words, seated beside you and seeking to divine the word which you are about to utter; your sisters sew by our side.  Empty dreams—­illusions of a moment—­my hand seeks yours; where are you, my beloved one?

“My life is an exile.  Far from those whom I love and by whom I am loved, my heart calls them and consumes away in its grief.  No, I do not love the great cities and their noise, towns peopled with strangers where no one knows you and where you know no one, where each one jostles and elbows the other without ever exchanging a smile.  But I love our quiet fields, the peace of home, and the voice of friends who greet you.  Up to the present I have always lived in contradiction with my nature; my fiery blood, my nature so hostile to injustice, the spectacle of unmerited miseries have thrown me into a struggle of which I do not foresee the issue, a struggle in which will remain to the end without fear and without reproach, that which daily breaks me down and consumes my life.

“I tell you, my much-loved darling, the secret miseries of my heart; no, I do not blush for what my hand has just written, but my heart is sick and suffering, and I tell it to you.  I suffer...  I wish to blot out these lines, but why?  Could they offend you?  What do they contain that could wound my darling?  Do I not know your affection, and do I not know that you love me?  Yes, you have not deceived me, I did not kiss a lying mouth; when seated on my knees you lulled me with the charm of your words, I believed you.  I wished to bind myself to a burning iron bar; weariness preys upon me and devours me.  I feel a maddening desire to recover life.  Is it Paris that produces this effect upon me?  I always yearn to be in places where I am not.  I live here to a complete solitude.  I believe you, Marie....”

Charpentier’s note-book only contained this line, which he had written in the darkness at the foot of the barricade while Denis Dussoubs was speaking:—­

  Admonet et magna testatur voce per umbras.

[28] February 18.  Louvain.

CHAPTER V.

OTHER DEEDS OF DARKNESS

Yvan had again seen Conneau.  He corroborated the information given in the letter of Alexandre Dumas to Bocage; with the fact we had the names.  On the 3d of December at M. Abbatucci’s house, 31, Rue Caumartin, in the presence of Dr. Conneau and of Pietri, a Corsican, born at Vezzani, named Jacques Francois Criscelli,[29] a man attached to the secret and personal service of Louis Bonaparte, had received from Pietri’s own mouth the offer of 25,000 francs “to take or kill Victor Hugo.”  He had accepted, and said, “That is all very well if I am alone.  But suppose there are two of us?”