hold the buds of our spring, the flowers of our summer, the fruits of our autumn.  We amused ourselves once, a few good fellows and I, for a dozen or more years, like mousquetaires, black, red, and gray; we denied ourselves nothing, not even an occasional filibustering here and there.  Now we are going to shake down the plums which age and experience have ripened.  Be one of us; you shall have your share in the pudding we are going to cook.

  Come; you will find a friend all yours in the skin of

H. de Marsay.

As Paul de Manerville ended the reading of this letter, which fell like the blows of a pickaxe on the edifice of his hopes, his illusions, and his love, the vessel which bore him from France was beyond the Azores.  In the midst of this utter devastation a cold and impotent anger laid hold of him.

“What had I done to them?” he said to himself.

That is the question of fools, of feeble beings, who, seeing nothing, can nothing foresee.  Then he cried aloud:  “Henri!  Henri!” to his loyal friend.  Many a man would have gone mad; Paul went to bed and slept that heavy sleep which follows immense disasters,—­the sleep that seized Napoleon after Waterloo.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Casa-Real, Duc de
  The Quest of the Absolute

Claes, Josephine de Temninck, Madame
  The Quest of the Absolute

Magus, Elie
  The Vendetta
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  Pierre Grassou
  Cousin Pons

Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
  The Thirteen
  The Ball at Sceaux
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Manerville, Comtesse Paul de
  The Lily of the Valley
  A Daughter of Eve

Marsay, Henri de
  The Thirteen
  The Unconscious Humorists
  Another Study of Woman
  The Lily of the Valley
  Father Goriot
  Jealousies of a Country Town
  Ursule Mirouet
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  Letters of Two Brides
  The Ball at Sceaux
  Modeste Mignon
  The Secrets of a Princess
  The Gondreville Mystery
  A Daughter of Eve

Maulincour, Baronne de
  The Thirteen

Stevens, Dinah
  Cousin Pons

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
  The Lily of the Valley
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  Cesar Birotteau
  Letters of Two Brides
  A Start in Life
  The Secrets of a Princess
  Another Study of Woman
  The Gondreville Mystery
  A Daughter of Eve