looking
magistrate, always as sad as his black coat? Was it not a crime to dream
of uniting that virginal simplicity to my detestable knowledge of the
world? For her, the future is yet the land of smiling chimeras; and long
since experience has dissipated all my illusions. She is as young as
innocence, and I am as old as vice."

The unfortunate magistrate felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. He
understood Claire, and excused her. He reproached himself for having
shown her how he suffered; for having cast a shadow upon her life. He
could not forgive himself for having spoken of his love. Ought he not
to have foreseen what had happened?--that she would refuse him, that he
would thus deprive himself of the happiness of seeing her, of hearing
her, and of silently adoring her?

"A young and romantic girl," pursued he, "must have a lover she can
dream of,--whom she can caress in imagination, as an ideal, gratifying
herself by seeing in him every great and brilliant quality, imagining
him full of nobleness, of bravery, of heroism. What would she see,
if, in my absence, she dreamed of me? Her imagination would present me
dressed in a funeral robe, in the depth of a gloomy dungeon, engaged
with some vile criminal. Is it not my trade to descend into all moral
sinks, to stir up the foulness of crime? Am I not compelled to wash
in secrecy and darkness the dirty linen of the most corrupt members of
society? Ah! some professions are fatal. Ought not the magistrate, like
the priest, to condemn himself to solitude and celibacy? Both know all,
they hear all, their costumes are nearly the same; but, while the priest
carries consolation in the folds of his black robe, the magistrate
conveys terror. One is mercy, the other chastisement. Such are the
images a thought of me would awaken; while the other,--the other--"

The wretched man continued his headlong course along the deserted quays.
He went with his head bare, his eyes haggard. To breathe more freely, he
had torn off his cravat and thrown it to the winds.

Sometimes, unconsciously, he crossed the path of a solitary wayfarer,
who would pause, touched with pity, and turn to watch the retreating
figure of the unfortunate wretch he thought deprived of reason. In a
by-road, near Grenelle, some police officers stopped him, and tried to
question him. He mechanically tendered them his card. They read it, and
permitted him to pass, convinced that he was drunk.

Anger,--a furious anger, be