y, fearing he had said too much. He was too
preoccupied to go down to breakfast with Bathilde; besides, he feared
lest the young girl should perceive his uneasiness, and ask the cause;
and as he did not know how to keep anything from her, he would have told
her all, and she would then have become his accomplice. He had his
coffee sent up to him, under pretext of having an overwhelming amount of
work to do, and that he was going to work during breakfast. As
Bathilde's love profited by this absence, she was rather pleased at it
than otherwise.

A few minutes before ten, Buvat left for his office; his fears had been
strong in his own house, but once in the street, they changed into
terrors. At every crossing, at the end of every court, behind every
angle, he thought that he saw the police-officers waiting for him. At
the corner of the Place des Victoires a musketeer appeared, coming from
the Rue Pagevin, and Buvat gave such a start on seeing him, that he
almost fell under the wheels of a carriage. At last, after many alarms,
he reached the library, bowed almost to the ground before the sentinel,
darted up the stairs, gained his office, and falling exhausted on his
seat, he shut up in his drawer all the papers of the Prince de Listhnay,
which he had brought with him, for fear the police should search his
house during his absence; and finding himself in safety, heaved a sigh,
which would not have failed in denouncing him to his colleagues as being
a prey to the greatest agitation, if he had not, as usual, arrived the
first.

Buvat had a principle, which was, that no personal preoccupation,
whether grave or gay, ought to disturb a clerk in the execution of his
duty. Therefore he set himself to his work, apparently as if nothing had
happened, but really in a state of moral perturbation impossible to
describe.

This work consisted, as usual, in classifying and arranging books. There
having been an alarm of fire three or four days before, the books had
been thrown on the floor, or carried out of the reach of the flames, and
there were consequently four or five thousand volumes to be reinstated
in their proper places; and, as it was a particularly tedious business,
Buvat had been selected for it, and had hitherto acquitted himself with
an intelligence and assiduity which had merited the commendations of his
superiors, and the raillery of his colleagues.

In spite of the urgency of the work, Buvat rested some minutes to
recov