m of everything, it still remains their only hope. What
else, indeed, will permit them to hope?"

He ceased, straining his ear to catch the distant cry of a newsvendor,
and rushed out into the avenue in pursuit of the fugitive yelping
shadow, hailed him, and snatched from him a sporting paper, which he
spread out under the light of a gas-lamp, scanning its pages for certain
names of horses: _Fleur-des-pois_, _La Chatelaine_, _Lucrece_. With
haggard eyes, trembling hands, dumbfounded, crushed, he dropped the
sheet: his horse had not won.

And Dr. Hibry, observing him from a distance, reflected that some day,
in his capacity of physician to the dead, he might well be called upon
to certify the suicide of his commissary of police, and he made up his
mind in advance to conclude, as far as possible, that his death was due
to accidental causes.

Suddenly he seized his umbrella.

"I must be off," he said. "I have been given a seat for the
Opera-Comique to-night. It would be a pity to waste it."

Before leaving the house, Ligny asked Madame Simonneau:

"Where have you put him?"

"In the bed," replied Madame Simonneau. "It was more decent."

He made no objection, and raising his eyes to the front of the house, he
saw at the windows of the bedroom, through the muslin curtains, the
light of the two candles which the housekeeper had placed on the bedside
table.

"Perhaps," he said, "one might get a nun to watch by him."

"It's not necessary," replied Madame Simonneau, who had invited some
neighbours of her own sex, and had ordered her wine and meat. "It's not
necessary, I will watch by him myself."

Ligny did not press the point.

The dog was still howling outside the gate.

Returning on foot to the barrier, he noticed, over Paris, a reddish glow
which filled the whole sky. Above the chimney-pots the factory chimneys
rose grotesque and black, against this fiery mist, seeming to look down
with a ridiculous familiarity upon the mysterious conflagration of a
world. The few passers-by whom he met on the boulevard strolled along
quietly, without raising their heads. Although he knew that when cities
are wrapped in night the moist atmosphere often reflects the lights,
becoming tinged with this uniform glow, which shines without a flicker,
he fancied that he was looking at the reflection of a vast fire. He
accepted, without reflection, the idea that Paris was sinking into the
abyss of a prodigious conflagration; he found i