rms his own land at Marsac, isn't he?"

"The very same," said Lucien.

"He is a queer kind of father, he is!" Courtois continued. "He is worth
two hundred thousand francs and more, without counting his money-box,
and he has sold his son up, they say."

When body and soul have been broken by a prolonged painful struggle,
there comes a crisis when a strong nature braces itself for greater
effort; but those who give way under the strain either die or sink into
unconsciousness like death. That hour of crisis had struck for Lucien;
at the vague rumor of the catastrophe that had befallen David he seemed
almost ready to succumb. "Oh! my sister!" he cried. "Oh, God! what have
I done? Base wretch that I am!"

He dropped down on the wooden bench, looking white and powerless as a
dying man; the miller's wife brought out a bowl of milk and made him
drink, but he begged the miller to help him back to his bed, and asked
to be forgiven for bringing a dying man into their house. He thought
his last hour had come. With the shadow of death, thoughts of religion
crossed a brain so quick to conceive picturesque fancies; he would see
the cure, he would confess and receive the last sacraments. The moan,
uttered in the faint voice by a young man with such a comely face and
figure, went to Mme. Courtois' heart.

"I say, little man, just take the horse and go to Marsac and ask Dr.
Marron to come and see this young man; he is in a very bad way, it seems
to me, and you might bring the cure as well. Perhaps they may know
more about that printer in the Place du Murier than you do, for Postel
married M. Marron's daughter."

Courtois departed. The miller's wife tried to make Lucien take food;
like all country-bred folk, she was full of the idea that sick folk
must be made to eat. He took no notice of her, but gave way to a
violent storm of remorseful grief, a kind of mental process of
counter-irritation, which relieved him.

The Courtois' mill lies a league away from Marsac, the town of the
district, and the half-way between Mansle and Angouleme; so it was not
long before the good miller came back with the doctor and the cure. Both
functionaries had heard rumors coupling Lucien's name with the name of
Mme. de Bargeton; and now when the whole department was talking of the
lady's marriage to the new Prefect and her return to Angouleme as the
Comtesse du Chatelet, both cure and doctor were consumed with a violent
curiosity to know why M. de Barg