on
the ground, and, bidding the gaoler see to his prisoner, rushed away
to the court below.

The prisoner needed some attention. Weakness, and fasting, and horror
had overpowered a delicate body and a sensitive mind, and he lay
senseless by the shattered relic of happier times. Antoine, the gaoler
(a weak-minded man whom circumstances had made cruel), looked at him
with indifference while the Jacobin remained in the place, and with
half-suppressed pity when he had gone. The place where he lay was a
hall or passage in the prison, into which several cells opened, and a
number of the prisoners were gathered together at one end of it. One
of them had watched the proceedings of the Jacobin and his victim with
profound interest, and now advanced to where the poor youth lay. He
was a priest, and though thirteen years had passed over his head since
we saw him in the chateau, and though toil and suffering and anxiety
had added the traces of as many more, yet it would not have been
difficult to recognize the towering height, the candid face, and,
finally, the large thumb in the little book of ----, Monsieur the
Preceptor, who had years ago exchanged his old position for a
parochial cure. He strode up to the gaoler (whose head came a little
above the priest's elbow), and, drawing him aside, asked, with his old
abruptness, "Who is this?"

"It is the Vicomte de B----. I know his face. He has escaped the
commissaires for some days."

"I thought so. Is his name on the registers?"

"No. He escaped arrest, and has just been brought in, as you saw."

"Antoine," said the priest, in a low voice, and with a gaze that
seemed to pierce the soul of the weak little gaoler; "Antoine, when
you were a shoemaker in the Rue de la Croix, in two or three hard
winters I think you found me a friend."

"Oh! Monsieur le Cure," said Antoine, writhing; "if Monsieur le Cure
would believe that if I could save his life! But--"

"Pshaw!" said the priest, "it is not for myself, but for this boy. You
must save him, Antoine. Hear me, you _must_. Take him now to one of
the lower cells and hide him. You risk nothing. His name is not on the
prison register. He will not be called, he will not be missed; that
fanatic will think that he has perished with the rest of us (Antoine
shuddered, though the priest did not move a muscle) and when this mad
fever has subsided and order is restored, he will reward you. And
Antoine--"

Here the priest pocketed his book, a