ed the door. She was
standing beside his couch with averted face.

A strange giddiness overtook him. He sank upon his knees at the
threshold.

--Pardon, pardon. My angel, can you forgive me?

A terrible nausea now seemed added to the fearful giddiness. His
utterance grew thick and sluggish.

--Speak, speak, enchantress. Forgiveness is all I ask. My Love, my
Life!

She did not answer. He staggered to his feet. As he rose, his eyes
fell on the pan of burning charcoal. A terrible suspicion flashed
across his mind. This giddiness,--this nausea. The ignorance of the
barbarian. This silence. O merciful heavens! she was dying!

He crawled toward her. He touched her. She fell forward with a
lifeless sound upon the floor. He uttered a piercing shriek, and threw
himself beside her.

* * * * *

A file of gendarmes, accompanied by the Chef Burke, found him the next
morning lying lifeless upon the floor. They laughed brutally,--these
cruel minions of the law,--and disengaged his arm from the waist of the
wooden dummy which they had come to reclaim for the mantuamaker.

Emptying a few bucketfuls of water over his form, they finally
succeeded in robbing him, not only of his mistress, but of that Death
he had coveted without her.

Ah! we live in a strange world, Messieurs.

FANTINE.

AFTER THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.

PROLOGUE.

As long as there shall exist three paradoxes, a moral Frenchman, a
religious Atheist, and a believing sceptic; so long, in fact, as
booksellers shall wait--say twenty-five years--for a new gospel; so
long as paper shall remain cheap and ink three sous a bottle, I have no
hesitation in saying that such books as these are not utterly
profitless.

VICTOR HUGO.

I.

To be good is to be queer. What is a good man? Bishop Myriel.

My friend, you will possibly object to this. You will say you know
what a good man is. Perhaps you will say your clergyman is a good man,
for instance.

Bah! you are mistaken; you are an Englishman, and an Englishman is a
beast.

Englishmen think they are moral when they are only serious. These
Englishmen also wear ill-shaped hats, and dress horribly!

Bah! they are canaille.

Still, Bishop Myriel was a good man,--quite as good as you. Better
than you, in fact.

One day M. Myriel was in Paris. This angel used to walk about the
streets like any other man. He was not proud, thou