d to know
his fate.

He had a sort of presentiment that his reception would destroy his
hopes. And the more he tried to banish these thoughts, the more forcibly
they returned. The thought that Micheline had forgotten her promise made
the blood rush to his face.

Madame Desvarennes's short letter suggested it. That his betrothed
was lost to him he understood, but he would not admit it. How was it
possible that Micheline should forget him? All his childhood passed
before his mind. He remembered the sweet and artless evidences of
affection which the young girl had given him. And yet she no longer
loved him! It was her own mother who said so. After that could he still
hope?

A prey to this deep trouble, Pierre entered Paris. On finding himself
face to face with Cayrol, the young man's first idea was, as Cayrol had
guessed, to cry out, "What's going on? Is all lost to me?" A sort of
anxious modesty kept back the words on his lips. He would not admit that
he doubted. And, then, Cayrol would only have needed to answer that
all was over, and that he could put on mourning for his love. He turned
around, and went out.

The tumult of Paris surprised and stunned him. After spending a year
in the peaceful solitudes of Africa, to find himself amid the cries of
street-sellers, the rolling of carriages, and the incessant movement of
the great city, was too great a contrast to him. Pierre was overcome
by languor; his head seemed too heavy for his body to carry; he
mechanically entered a cab which conveyed him to the Hotel du Louvre.
Through the window, against the glass of which he tried to cool his
heated forehead, he saw pass in procession before his eyes, the Column
of July, the church of St. Paul, the Hotel de Ville in ruins, and the
colonnade of the Louvre.

An absurd idea took possession of him. He remembered that during the
Commune he was nearly killed in the Rue Saint-Antoine by the explosion
of a shell, thrown by the insurgents from the heights of Pere-Lachaise.
He thought that had he died then, Micheline would have wept for him.
Then, as in a nightmare, it seemed to him that this hypothesis was
realized. He saw the church hung with black, he heard the funeral
chants. A catafalque contained his coffin, and slowly his betrothed
came, with a trembling hand, to throw holy water on the cloth which
covered the bier. And a voice said within him:

"You are dead, since Micheline is about to marry another."

He made an effort