He turned it over, he turned it back again; there was no other mark; there was nothing more; and Monsieur the Viscount did not conceal from himself that he was disappointed.  How could it be otherwise?  He had been bred in ease and luxury, and surrounded with everything that could make life beautiful; while ugliness, and want, and sickness, and all that make life miserable, had been kept, as far as they can be kept, from the precincts of the beautiful chateau which was his home.  What were the consolations of religion to him?  They are offered to those (and to those only) who need them.  They were to Monsieur the Viscount what the Crucified Christ was to the Greeks of old—­foolishness.

He put the paper in his pocket and lay down again, feeling it the crowning disappointment of what he had lately suffered.  Presently, Antoine came with some food; it was not dainty, but Monsieur the Viscount devoured it like a famished hound, and then made inquiries as to how he came and how long he had been there.  When the gaoler began to describe him, whom he called the Cure, Monsieur the Viscount’s attention quickened into eagerness, an eagerness deepened by the tender interest that always hangs round the names of those whom we have known in happier and younger days.  The happy memories recalled by hearing of his old tutor seemed to blot out his present misfortunes.  With French excitability, he laughed and wept alternately.

“As burly as ever, you say?  The little book?  I remember it, it was his breviary.  Ah! it is he.  It is Monsieur the Preceptor, whom I have not seen for years.  Take me to him, bring him here, let me see him!”

But Monsieur the Preceptor was in Paradise.

That first night of Monsieur the Viscount’s imprisonment was a terrible one.  The bitter chill of a Parisian autumn, the gnawings of half-satisfied hunger, the thick walls that shut out all hope of escape but did not exclude those fearful cries that lasted with few intervals throughout the night, made it like some hideous dream.  At last the morning broke; at half-past two o’clock, some members of the commune presented themselves in the hall of the National Assembly with the significant announcement:—­“The prisons are empty!” and Antoine, who had been quaking for hours, took courage, and went with half a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water to the cell that was not “empty.”  He found his prisoner struggling with a knot of white ribbon, which he was trying to fasten in his hair.  One glance at his face told all.

“It is the fever,” said Antoine; and he put down the bread and water and fetched an old blanket and a pillow; and that day and for many days, the gaoler hung above his prisoner’s pallet with the tenderness of a woman.  Was he haunted by the vision of a burly figure that had bent over his own sick bed in the Rue de la Croix?  Did the voice (once so familiar in counsel and benediction!) echo still in his ears?