“Driver, a hundred francs for you, if you follow that coupe down there!”

But the driver, suddenly aroused by a man who stood in the middle of the street, bareheaded, and in evening costume, and who offered him such an enormous sum, thought it was a practical joke attempted by a drunken man, and replied furiously,—­

“Look out, rascal!  Get out of the way, or I drive over you!”

And therewith he whipped his horses; and Daniel would have been driven over, if he had not promptly jumped aside.  But all this had taken time; and, when he looked up, the coupe was far off, nearly at the boulevard.  To attempt overtaking it now would have been folly indeed; and Daniel remained there, overwhelmed and defeated.

What could he do?  It occurred to him that he might hasten to Maxime, and ask him for advice.  But fate was against him; he gave up that idea.  He went slowly back to his lodgings, and threw himself into an arm-chair, determined not to go to bed till he had found a way to extricate himself from the effects of his egregious folly.

But he had now been for two days agitated by the extremest alternatives, like a man out at sea, whom the waves buffet, and throw—­now up to the shore, and now back again into open water.  He had not closed an eye for forty-eight hours; and, if the heart seems to be able to suffer almost indefinitely, our physical strength is strictly limited.  Thus he fell asleep, dreaming even in his sleep that he was hard at work, and just about to discover the means by which he could penetrate the mystery of Miss Brandon.

It was bright day when Daniel awoke, chilled and stiffened; for he had not changed his clothes when he came home, and his fire had gone out.  His first impulse was one of wrath against himself.  What! he succumbed so easily?—­he, the sailor, who remembered very well having remained more than once for forty, and even once for sixty hours on deck, when his vessel was threatened by a hurricane?  Had his peaceful and monotonous life in his office during the last two years weakened him to such a point, that all the springs of his system had lost their power?

Poor fellow! he knew not that the direst fatigue is trifling in comparison with that deep moral excitement which shakes the human system to its most mysterious depths.  Nevertheless, while he hastened to kindle a large fire, in order to warm himself, he felt that the rest had done him good.  The last evil effects of his excitement last night had passed away; the charm by which he had been fascinated was broken; and he felt once more master of all his faculties.

Now his folly appeared to him so utterly inexplicable, that, if he had but tasted a glass of lemonade at Miss Brandon’s house, he should have been inclined to believe that they had given him one of those drugs which set the brains on fire, and produce a kind of delirium.  But he had taken nothing, and, even if he had, was the foolish act less real for that?  The consequences would be fatal, he had no doubt.