d an ecclesiastic,
who boarded, for meals only, with the woman who tenanted the dwelling;
the other two were near neighbours. They were all friends, and often
met thus in the evening to play cards. They were sitting round the
card-table, but although it was nearly ten o'clock the cards had not yet
been touched. They spoke in low tones, and a half-interrupted confidence
had, this evening, put a check on the usual gaiety.

Someone knocked gently at the door, although no sound of steps on the
creaking wooden staircase had been heard, and a wheedling voice asked
for admittance. The occupier of the room, Madame Legrand, rose, and
admitted a man of about six-and-twenty, at whose appearance the four
friends exchanged glances, at once observed by the new-comer, who
affected, however, not to see them. He bowed successively to the three
women, and several times with the utmost respect to the abbe, making
signs of apology for the interruption caused by his appearance; then,
coughing several times, he turned to Madame Legrand, and said in a
feeble voice, which seemed to betoken much suffering--

"My kind mistress, will you and these other ladies excuse my presenting
myself at such an hour and in such a costume? I am ill, and I was
obliged to get up."

His costume was certainly singular enough: he was wrapped in a large
dressing-gown of flowered chintz; his head was adorned by a nightcap
drawn up at the top and surmounted by a muslin frill. His appearance did
not contradict his complaint of illness; he was barely four feet six
in height, his limbs were bony, his face sharp, thin, and pale. Thus
attired, coughing incessantly, dragging his feet as if he had no
strength to lift them, holding a lighted candle in one hand and an egg
in the other, he suggested a caricature-some imaginary invalid just
escaped from M. Purgon. Nevertheless, no one ventured to smile,
notwithstanding his valetudinarian appearance and his air of affected
humility. The perpetual blinking of the yellow eyelids which fell over
the round and hollow eyes, shining with a sombre fire which he could
never entirely suppress, reminded one of a bird of prey unable to face
the light, and the lines of his face, the hooked nose, and the thin,
constantly quivering, drawn-in lips suggested a mixture of boldness
and baseness, of cunning and sincerity. But there is no book which can
instruct one to read the human countenance correctly; and some special
circumstance must have