r will see--Death laughing.

To enter into the interests that lay beneath this introduction to my
tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at
certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned with
the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a whole--a
story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up of two
distinct sets of actions.

Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister, aged
about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel where
the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three o'clock one
morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening dress, under
a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an exclamation of
dismay--qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely deserts a
Frenchman--at seeing no hackney coach waiting outside the gates, and
hearing no noises such as arise from the wooden shoes or harsh voices
of the hackney-coachmen of Paris. The occasional pawing of the horses
of the Chief Justice's carriage--the young man having left him still
playing _bouillote_ with Cambaceres--alone rang out in the paved court,
which was scarcely lighted by the carriage lamps. Suddenly the young
lawyer felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and turning round, found
himself face to face with the Judge, to whom he bowed. As the footman
let down the steps of his carriage, the old gentleman, who had served
the Convention, suspected the junior's dilemma.

"All cats are gray in the dark," said he good-humoredly. "The Chief
Justice cannot compromise himself by putting a pleader in the right
way! Especially," he went on, "when the pleader is the nephew of an old
colleague, one of the lights of the grand Council of State which gave
France the Napoleonic Code."

At a gesture from the chief magistrate of France under the Empire, the
foot-passenger got into the carriage.

"Where do you live?" asked the great man, before the footman who awaited
his orders had closed the door.

"Quai des Augustins, monseigneur."

The horses started, and the young man found himself alone with the
Minister, to whom he had vainly tried to speak before and after the
sumptuous dinner given by Cambaceres; in fact, the great man had
evidently avoided him throughout the evening.

"Well, Monsieur _de_ Granville, you are on the high road!"

"So long as I sit by your Excellency's side--"

"Nay, I am not jesting," said the Minister. "Y