past sufferings.

"Why, monsieur, is not the Comtesse Ferraud my wife? She has thirty
thousand francs a year, which belong to me, and she will not give me a
son. When I tell lawyers these things--men of sense; when I propose--I,
a beggar--to bring action against a Count and Countess; when I--a
dead man--bring up as against a certificate of death a certificate of
marriage and registers of births, they show me out, either with the air
of cold politeness, which you all know how to assume to rid yourself of
a hapless wretch, or brutally, like men who think they have to deal with
a swindler or a madman--it depends on their nature. I have been buried
under the dead; but now I am buried under the living, under papers,
under facts, under the whole of society, which wants to shove me
underground again!"

"Pray resume your narrative," said Derville.

"'Pray resume it!'" cried the hapless old man, taking the young lawyer's
hand. "That is the first polite word I have heard since----"

The Colonel wept. Gratitude choked his voice. The appealing and
unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a gesture, even in
silence, entirely convinced Derville, and touched him deeply.

"Listen, monsieur," said he; "I have this evening won three hundred
francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man
happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain the
documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give you five
francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the smallness
of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his fortune to
make. Proceed."

The Colonel, as he called himself, sat for a moment motionless and
bewildered; the depth of his woes had no doubt destroyed his powers of
belief. Though he was eager in pursuit of his military distinction, of
his fortune, of himself, perhaps it was in obedience to the inexplicable
feeling, the latent germ in every man's heart, to which we owe the
experiments of alchemists, the passion for glory, the discoveries of
astronomy and of physics, everything which prompts man to expand his
being by multiplying himself through deeds or ideas. In his mind the
_Ego_ was now but a secondary object, just as the vanity of success or
the pleasures of winning become dearer to the gambler than the object
he has at stake. The young lawyer's words were as a miracle to this man,
for ten years repudiated by his wife, by justice, by the whole