t a prince, nor a lord, nor a member of parliament, nor
a bishop; why are his hands as white as if he did nothing?"

"Then it is very strange that he does not feel hungry and wake up,"
retorted the miller's wife; she had just prepared breakfast for
yesterday's chance guest. "A play-actor, is he?" she continued. "Where
will he be going? It is too early yet for the fair at Angouleme."

But neither the miller nor his wife suspected that (actors, princes,
and bishops apart) there is a kind of being who is both prince and
actor, and invested besides with a magnificent order of priesthood
--that the Poet seems to do nothing, yet reigns over all humanity when
he can paint humanity.

"What can he be?" Courtois asked of his wife.

"Suppose it should be dangerous to take him in?" queried she.

"Pooh! thieves look more alive than that; we should have been robbed
by this time," returned her spouse.

"I am neither a prince nor a thief, nor a bishop nor an actor," Lucien
said wearily; he must have overheard the colloquy through the window,
and now he suddenly appeared. "I am poor, I am tired out, I have come
on foot from Paris. My name is Lucien de Rubempre, and my father was
M. Chardon, who used to have Postel's business in L'Houmeau. My sister
married David Sechard, the printer in the Place du Murier at
Angouleme."

"Stop a bit," said the miller, "that printer is the son of the old
skinflint who farms 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, th