auchery; but the pure figure of Claire,
dressed in white garments, always barred the doors against him.

Then he took refuge in work, as in a sanctuary; condemned himself to the
most incessant labour, and forbade himself to think of Claire, as the
consumptive forbids himself to meditate upon his malady.

His eagerness, his feverish activity, earned him the reputation of an
ambitious man, who would go far; but he cared for nothing in the world.

At length, he found, not rest, but that painless benumbing which
commonly follows a great catastrophe. The convalescence of oblivion was
commencing.

These were the events, recalled to M. Daburon's mind when old Tabaret
pronounced the name of Commarin. He believed them buried under the ashes
of time; and behold they reappeared, just the same as those characters
traced in sympathetic ink when held before a fire. In an instant they
unrolled themselves before his memory, with the instantaneousness of a
dream annihilating time and space.

During some minutes, he assisted at the representation of his own life.
At once actor and spectator, he was there seated in his arm-chair,
and at the same time he appeared on the stage. He acted, and he judged
himself.

His first thought, it must be confessed, was one of hate, followed by
a detestable feeling of satisfaction. Chance had, so to say, delivered
into his hands this man preferred by Claire, this man, now no longer a
haughty nobleman, illustrious by his fortune and his ancestors, but the
illegitimate offspring of a courtesan. To retain a stolen name, he had
committed a most cowardly assassination. And he, the magistrate, was
about to experience the infinite gratification of striking his enemy
with the sword of justice.

But this was only a passing thought. The man's upright conscience
revolted against it, and made its powerful voice heard.

"Is anything," it cried, "more monstrous than the association of these
two ideas,--hatred and justice? Can a magistrate, without despising
himself more than he despises the vile beings he condemns, recollect
that a criminal, whose fate is in his hands, has been his enemy? Has an
investigating magistrate the right to make use of his exceptional powers
in dealing with a prisoner; so long as he harbours the least resentment
against him?"

M. Daburon repeated to himself what he had so frequently thought during
the year, when commencing a fresh investigation: "And I also, I almost
stained myself