chemist's and druggist's, but called up
memories, associations, to touch him. The footsteps of the two men
echoed in the silence. Monsieur Bargemont looked round, advanced
a few paces more and rang at a door. Jean Servien had now come up
with him and stood beside him under the archway. It was the same
door he had kissed one night of desperation, Gabrielle's door. It
opened; Jean took a step forward and Monsieur Bargemont, going
in first, left it open, thinking the National Guard there was
a tenant going home to his lodging. Jean slipped in and climbed
two flights of the dark staircase. Monsieur Bargemont ascended
to the third floor and rang at a door on the landing, which was
opened. Jean could hear Gabrielle's voice saying:

"How late you are coming home, dear; I have sent Rosalie to bed;
I was waiting up for you, you see."

The man replied, still puffing and panting with his exertions:

"Just fancy, they wanted to pitch me into the river, those
scoundrels! But never you mind, I've brought you something mighty
rare and precious--a pot of butter."

"Like Little Red Ridinghood," laughed Gabrielle's voice. "Come
in and you shall tell me all about it.... Hark! do you hear?"

"What, the guns? Oh! that never stops."

"No, the noise of a fall on the stairs."

"You're dreaming!"

"Give me the candle, I'm going to look."

Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three steps and saw Jean
stretched motionless on the landing.

"A drunkard," he said; "there's so many of them! They were drunkards,
those chaps who wanted to drown me."

He was holding his light to Jean's ashy face, while Gabrielle,
leaning over the rail, looked on:

"It's not a drunken man," she said; "he is too white. Perhaps
it is a poor young fellow dying of hunger. When you're brought
down to rations of bread and horseflesh----"

Then she looked more carefully under frowning brows, and muttered:

"It's very queer, it's really very queer!"

"Do you know him?" asked Bargemont.

"I am trying to remember----"

But there was no need to try; already she had recalled it all--how
her hand had been kissed at the gate of the little house at Bellevue.

Running to her rooms, she returned with water and a bottle of
ether, knelt beside the fainting man, and slipping her arm, which
was encircled by the white band of a nursing sister, under his
shoulders, raised Jean's head. He opened his eyes, saw her, heaved
the deepest sigh of love ever expelled from a huma