sat between the two empty bottles, while spectres danced in the
light of the unsnuffed candle--spectres such as Hoffmann strews over his
punch-drenched pages, like black, fantastic dust.

Danglars alone was content and joyous--he had got rid of an enemy and
made his own situation on the Pharaon secure. Danglars was one of those
men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart.
Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man
was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking
it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires. He went to
bed at his usual hour, and slept in peace.

Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux' letter, embraced Renee,
kissed the marquise's hand, and shaken that of the marquis, started for
Paris along the Aix road.

Old Dantes was dying with anxiety to know what had become of Edmond. But
we know very well what had become of Edmond.

Chapter 10. The King's Closet at the Tuileries.

We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling--thanks
to trebled fees--with all speed, and passing through two or three
apartments, enter at the Tuileries the little room with the arched
window, so well known as having been the favorite closet of Napoleon and
Louis XVIII., and now of Louis Philippe.

There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him from
Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not uncommon to
great people, he was particularly attached, the king, Louis XVIII., was
carelessly listening to a man of fifty or fifty-two years of age, with
gray hair, aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire,
and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of Gryphius's rather
inaccurate, but much sought-after, edition of Horace--a work which
was much indebted to the sagacious observations of the philosophical
monarch.

"You say, sir"--said the king.

"That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire."

"Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the seven lean
kine?"

"No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of plenty and
seven years of scarcity; and with a king as full of foresight as your
majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be feared."

"Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?"

"Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is brewing in the
south."

"Well, my dear duke," replied Louis XVIII., "I think you are wrongly
informed,