tily put on crosswise. But to this recompense others were
added. The monarch named him chevalier of his orders, count and
counselor of state, to the grand stupefaction of the young man, who
understood nothing about it.

"The little yellow urchin, shaking his blankets, announced to the king's
envoy, on the part of the perjured Strasburg magistrates, that the city
was betrayed."

I had now that rare complementing pair, a legend and its historical
foundation. I had been obliged to cross the Rhine to obtain my prize,
but I did not regret the journey. How far I was from fancying the
ill-natured turn that the little yellow man was playing me!

While my neighbor of the Stork was talking, and I was taking down his
words with my utmost rapidity, Time took advantage of me, and put double
the accustomed length into each of his steps. On recrossing into
Strasburg I had before me barely the moments necessary to regain the
railway station.

The gate at the first-class passenger-exit was about closing, fifteen
minutes in advance of the start, according to the European custom. I
pushed in rather roughly.

[Illustration: "JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE PURSUING CRIME"]

The railway-officer or porter was at the gate, barring my passage until
I could exhibit a ticket. I had not taken time to purchase one: the
train was fuming and threatening the belated passengers with a series of
false starts. Surprised into rudeness, and quite forgetting that my
appearance warranted no airs of autocracy, I made some contemptuous
remark.

"Der Herr is much too hasty. Der Herr is doubtless provided with the
necessary papers which will enable him to pass the French frontier."

It was not the porter who spoke now: it was some kind of official relic
or shadow or mouchard left from the old custom-house, and suffered to
hang on the railway-station as an ornament. His costume, half uniform
and half fatigue-dress, compromised nobody, and was surmounted by a
skull cap. His pantaloons were short, his figure was paunchy,
authoritative and German. His German, however, was spoken with a French
accent. As I mused in stupefaction upon the hint he had uttered, he
pointed with his hand. "The train is starting," he observed.

The reader probably knows Prudhon's great picture in the Louvre,
originally painted for the Palace of Justice, and entitled "Divine
Justice and Vengeance in Pursuit of Crime"? This picture, which I had
not thought of, I suppose, for an age, suddenl