, "will you not have to engage
pleaders, to have documents copied, to keep the underlings of the
law going, and to support yourself? The expenses of the preliminary
inquiries will, at a rough guess, amount to ten or twelve thousand
francs. I have not so much to lend you--I am crushed as it is by the
enormous interest I have to pay on the money I borrowed to buy my
business; and you?--Where can you find it."

Large tears gathered in the poor veteran's faded eyes, and rolled down
his withered cheeks. This outlook of difficulties discouraged him. The
social and the legal world weighed on his breast like a nightmare.

"I will go to the foot of the Vendome column!" he cried. "I will call
out: 'I am Colonel Chabert who rode through the Russian square at
Eylau!'--The statue--he--he will know me."

"And you will find yourself in Charenton."

At this terrible name the soldier's transports collapsed.

"And will there be no hope for me at the Ministry of War?"

"The war office!" said Derville. "Well, go there; but take a formal
legal opinion with you, nullifying the certificate of your death. The
government offices would be only too glad if they could annihilate the
men of the Empire."

The Colonel stood for a while, speechless, motionless, his eyes fixed,
but seeing nothing, sunk in bottomless despair. Military justice is
ready and swift; it decides with Turk-like finality, and almost always
rightly. This was the only justice known to Chabert. As he saw the
labyrinth of difficulties into which he must plunge, and how much money
would be required for the journey, the poor old soldier was mortally hit
in that power peculiar to man, and called the Will. He thought it would
be impossible to live as party to a lawsuit; it seemed a thousand times
simpler to remain poor and a beggar, or to enlist as a trooper if any
regiment would pass him.

His physical and mental sufferings had already impaired his bodily
health in some of the most important organs. He was on the verge of one
of those maladies for which medicine has no name, and of which the seat
is in some degree variable, like the nervous system itself, the part
most frequently attacked of the whole human machine, a malady which may
be designated as the heart-sickness of the unfortunate. However serious
this invisible but real disorder might already be, it could still be
cured by a happy issue. But a fresh obstacle, an unexpected incident,
would be enough to wreck this vigo