n, thousands of sick men, thousands of
old men?"

"Poor Caroline!" cried Bianchon.

As he heard the name the Count shuddered, and grasped the doctor's arm
with the grip of an iron vise, as it seemed to Bianchon.

"Her name is Caroline Crochard?" asked the President, in a voice that
was evidently broken.

"Then you know her?" said the doctor, astonished.

"And the wretch's name is Solvet.--Ay, you have kept your word!"
exclaimed Granville; "you have roused my heart to the most terrible pain
it can suffer till it is dust. That emotion, too, is a gift from hell,
and I always know how to pay those debts."

By this time the Count and the doctor had reached the corner of the Rue
de la Chaussee d'Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round with a
basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the Revolution,
facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing by the
curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a shriveled
face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his caricatures of the
sweepers of Paris.

"Do you ever pick up a thousand-franc note?"

"Now and then, master."

"And you restore them?"

"It depends on the reward offered."

"You're the man for me," cried the Count, giving the man a
thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on
condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk,
fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give
work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist--perhaps to the police, the
public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do
anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner or later."

A draughtsman would need at once the pencil of Charlet and of Callot,
the brush of Teniers and of Rembrandt, to give a true notion of this
night-scene.

"Now I have squared accounts with hell, and had some pleasure for my
money," said the Count in a deep voice, pointing out the indescribable
physiognomy of the gaping scavenger to the doctor, who stood stupefied.
"As for Caroline Crochard!--she may die of hunger and thirst, hearing
the heartrending shrieks of her starving children, and convinced of the
baseness of the man she loves. I will not give a sou to rescue her; and
because you have helped her, I will see you no more----"

The Count left Bianchon standing like a statue, and walked as briskly
as a young man to the Rue Saint-Lazare, soon reaching the littl