and the
vivas drowned all other sounds.

"You hear them, Guillaume, you hear them," said the sailor to the other
prisoner; "That shout is our death-cry. Bonaparte comes not here to-day
but to see his judges do his bidding."

"What care I?" said the other, fiercely. "The guillotine or the sabre,
the axe or the bayonet,--it is all one. We knew what must come of it."

The door opened as he spoke, and a greffier of the tribunal appeared
with four gendarmes.

"Come, Messieurs," said he, "the court is waiting for you."

"And how go matters without, sir?" said the elder, in an easy tone.

"Badly for the prisoners," said the greffier, shaking his head.
"Monsieur Moreau, the general's brother, has done much injury; he has
insulted the Consul."

"Bravely done!" cried the younger man, with enthusiasm. "It is well he
should hear truth one day, though the tongue that uttered it should be
cold the next."

"Move on, sir!" said the greffier, sternly. "Not you," added he, as I
pressed forward after the rest; "your time has not come."

"Would that it had!" said I, as the door closed upon me, and I was left
in total solitude.

The day was over, and the evening already late, when a turnkey appeared,
and desired me to follow him. A moody indifference to everything had
settled on me, and I never spoke as I walked behind him down corridor
after corridor; and across a court, into a large, massive-looking
building, whose grated windows and strongly-barred doors reminded me of
the Temple.

"Here is your cell," said he, roughly, as he unlocked a low door near
the entrance.

"It is gloomy enough," said I, with a sad smile.

"And yet many have shed tears to leave it before now," rejoined he, with
a savage twinkle of his small eyes.

I was glad when the hoarse crash of the closed door told me I was alone;
and I threw myself upon my bed and buried my face in my hands.

There is a state which is not sleep, and yet is akin to it, into which
grief can bring us,--a half-dreary stupor, where only sorrows are felt;
and even they come dulled and blunted, as if time and years had softened
down their sting. But no ray of hope shines there,--a dreary waste,
without a star. The cold, dark sea, boundless and bleak, is not more
saddening than life then seems before us; there is neither path to
follow nor goal to reach, and an apathy worse than death creeps over all
our faculties. And yet, when we awake we wish for this again. Into this
state