uivering with
agitation, for the beating of her heart was shaking her whole frame.

"Come to the Hotel de Saint-Quentin to-morrow for your papers," she
said. "I will be there at noon. Be punctual."

She rose hastily, and disappeared. Raphael thought of following Pauline,
feared to compromise her, and stayed. He looked at Foedora; she seemed
to him positively ugly. Unable to understand a single phrase of the
music, and feeling stifled in the theatre, he went out, and returned
home with a full heart.

"Jonathan," he said to the old servant, as soon as he lay in bed,
"give me half a drop of laudanum on a piece of sugar, and don't wake me
to-morrow till twenty minutes to twelve."

"I want Pauline to love me!" he cried next morning, looking at the
talisman the while in unspeakable anguish.

The skin did not move in the least; it seemed to have lost its power to
shrink; doubtless it could not fulfil a wish fulfilled already.

"Ah!" exclaimed Raphael, feeling as if a mantle of lead had fallen away,
which he had worn ever since the day when the talisman had been given to
him; "so you are playing me false, you are not obeying me, the pact is
broken! I am free; I shall live. Then was it all a wretched joke?" But
he did not dare to believe in his own thought as he uttered it.

He dressed himself as simply as had formerly been his wont, and set out
on foot for his old lodging, trying to go back in fancy to the happy
days when he abandoned himself without peril to vehement desires, the
days when he had not yet condemned all human enjoyment. As he walked
he beheld Pauline--not the Pauline of the Hotel Saint-Quentin, but the
Pauline of last evening. Here was the accomplished mistress he had so
often dreamed of, the intelligent young girl with the loving nature and
artistic temperament, who understood poets, who understood poetry, and
lived in luxurious surroundings. Here, in short, was Foedora,
gifted with a great soul; or Pauline become a countess, and twice a
millionaire, as Foedora had been. When he reached the worn threshold,
and stood upon the broken step at the door, where in the old days he had
had so many desperate thoughts, an old woman came out of the room within
and spoke to him.

"You are M. Raphael de Valentin, are you not?"

"Yes, good mother," he replied.

"You know your old room then," she replied; "you are expected up there."

"Does Mme. Gaudin still own the house?" Raphael asked.

"Oh no, sir. Mme. Gaud