ar he had
recognised. "Ah, yes," he said, "it is she!" He drew over his face the
cape of his mantle, and disappeared as completely as it is possible to
disappear when one is perched upon a hillock. It was six years since he
had seen this woman, and he had promised himself never to see her again;
but man is the plaything of circumstances, and his happiness as well
as his pride is at the mercy of a chance encounter. Count Abel was no
longer proud; for some moments he had humbled himself, he had ceased to
exist.

Happily he discovered that he had not been recognised; that the woman
of sixty years of age was not looking his way. She had good taste;
discovering the hideous aspect of the country, which is usually known as
the Vallee du Diable, she had opened a volume, bound in morocco, which
her waiting-woman had placed in her hands. This volume was not a new
novel; it was a German book, entitled "The History of Civilization,
viewed in Accordance with the Doctrines of Evolution, from the most
Remote Period to the Present Day." She neither had made much progress
in the pages of the book nor in the history of civilization; she had not
got beyond the age of stone or of bronze; she was still among primitive
animal life, among the protozoa, the monads, the infusoria, the
vibratiles--in the age of albumen, or gelatinous civilization, as it was
called by the author, the sagacity of whose views charmed her. She only
interrupted her reading at intervals to lightly stroke the nose of her
pug, who lay snoring in her lap, and she was a thousand leagues from
suspecting that Count Abel Larinski was at hand, watching her.

The berlin passed by him without stopping, and soon it had begun the
descent towards Bergun. Then he felt a great weight roll from his heart,
which beat freely once more. The berlin moved rapidly away; the count
followed it with his prayers, smoothing its course, removing every
stone or other obstacle that might retard its progress. It was just
disappearing round one of the curves of the road, when it crossed
another post-chaise, making the ascent in a walk, and in it Count Abel
perceived something red: it was the hood of Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz. A
moment more and the berlin was gone; it seemed to him that the shadow of
his sorrowful youth, emerged suddenly from the realm of shades, had been
plunged back there forever, and that the fay of hope--she who holds
in her keeping the secrets of the future--was ascending toward