adroit, demure, and absolute confidence that he would
be permitted at once to ascend. Once inside, he would go the rounds of
the apartments. So he would get five times as much in a day as any of
his fellows. A certain amount of the receipts he would yield up to the
treasury of the monastery; the rest he kept for himself. After a while
this came to be suspected, and he quietly withdrew to a new country.

There was not the slightest tangible corroboration of this story. It
might have been the merest gossip or the invention of an enemy. But it
fitted Carron so perfectly, that from the day I heard it I could never,
somehow, question its substantial truth. If I had questioned it, I
should have repeated the story to him, to give him an opportunity to
answer. But something warned me not to do so.

Fidele held on well at the custom-house, and I think that he became a
general favorite. No one who took the old soldier by the hand and looked
him in the eye could question his absolute honesty; and as for skill in
his duties,--well, it was the custom-house.

But he was not saving much money. He was free to give and free to lend
to his fellow-countrymen; and, moreover, various ways were pointed
out to him by Mr. Fox, from time to time, in which an old soldier,
delighting to aid his country, could serve her pecuniarily. The
republic,--that is, the Republicans,--it was all one.

One afternoon, late in summer, Fidele appeared at my office. He seldom
visited me, except quarterly for his pension affidavit. As he came in
now, I saw that something had happened. His grisly face wore the same
kindly smile that it had always borne, but the light had gone out of it.
His story was short. He had lost his place. He had been notified that
his services would not be needed after Saturday. No reason had been
given him; he was simply dismissed in humiliation. There must be some
misunderstanding, such as occurs between the warmest friends. And was
not the great government his friend? Did it not send him his pension
regularly? Had it not sent a special messenger to seek him out, in his
obscurity, for this position; and was he not far better suited to it now
than at the outset?

In reply to questions from me, he told me more about Mr. Fox's first
visit than I had hitherto known. I asked him, in a casual way, about the
ward-meetings, and whether the French citizens generally attended them.
No, they had been dropping off; they had become envious, perha