followed close on the heels of
white-winged hope.

We left him to himself.

"Now, then," said I to the Doctor, "we have given our word; how are we
to keep it?"

"We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morning we will talk
it over."

Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg.

We had had time to think over the incident of the past night, and were
both equally surprised at the lack of address shown by Marcas in the
minor difficulties of life--he, a man who never saw any difficulties in
the solution of the hardest problems of abstract or practical politics.
But these elevated characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand,
and will, like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand
francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a pair of
boots, did not set out for India.

"Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste.

"I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit."

"Where?"

"From Humann."

"How?"

"Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers--his customers go to him;
so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that I
dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall tell
him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that his
indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me in the upper
circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be Humann if he
sends in his bill before three months."

The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor enough
in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of honor,
Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as a
political personage ought to be dressed.

Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two watches
bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont-de-Piete. For my part, I had
said nothing of the six shirts and all necessary linen, which cost me
no more than the pleasure of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop
whom I had treated to Musard's during the carnival.

Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he ought. He only
inquired as to the means by which we had got possession of such riches,
and we made him laugh for the last time. We looked on our Marcas as
shipowners, when they have exhausted their credit and every resource
at their command it fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts out to
sea.

Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his memori