“It was doubtless a fine thing in your eyes this morning,” she said, “to throw scorn to that wretch who could have destroyed you with a word.” I felt my breath come quickly. “That wretch!” I whispered--“this morning?” “It was what I said, monsieur,--the _loup-garou_ of the Salle de la Liberté. But where one attaches any responsibility to life, one should learn to distinguish between bravado and courage.” I think I must have turned very pale, for a sudden concern came into her face. “Mademoiselle,” I said, “will persist in giving me the best reason for holding life cheaply--that I cannot, it seems, find favour with her.” “Was it, then, monsieur, that you yourself were your only consideration?” “Oh! give me at least the indulgence,” I cried, “to retort upon an insolent that insults me.” “_Grand Dieu!_” she said, mockingly; “but what a perverted heroism! And must a man’s duty be always first towards his dignity, and afterwards, a long way----” She broke off, panting, and tapping her foot on the ground. I looked at her, all mazed and dumfoundered. “And afterwards?” I repeated. She would not continue. A little silence succeeded. “Mademoiselle,” I said at length sadly--“let me speak out what is in my heart, and have done with it. That little cry of pity and of protest that I heard uttered this morning when sentence was demanded upon me in the Palais de Justice, and that I must needs now associate with this new dear knowledge of your freedom--if I have put upon it an unwarrantable construction, something beyond the mere expression of a woman’s sympathy with the unfortunate--you will, I am sure, extend that sympathy to my blindness, the realisation of which must in itself prove my heavy punishment. If, also, I have dared to translate the anxiety you have by your own showing suffered, here in this savage burrow, into a sentiment more profound than that of simple concern for an old-time comrade, you will spare my presumption, will you not, the bitterness of a rebuke? It shall not be needed, believe me. My very love----” She interrupted me, rising to her feet white and peremptory. “Not for me, monsieur--not for me! And, for _my_ associations--they shall never be of that word with deceit!” “Deceit!” “But is it not so? Have you not approached my confidence in a false guise, under a false name? Oh!” (she stamped her foot again) “cannot you see how my condescension to the Citizen Thibaut is stultified by this new knowledge of his rank? how to favour now what I had hitherto held at arm’s-length would be to place myself in the worst regard of snobbishness!” “No, mademoiselle--I confess that I cannot;--but then I journeyed hither in the National hearse.” “I do not understand.” “Why, only that there one finds a ragpicker’s head clapt upon a monseigneur’s neck in the fraternity that is decreed to level all distinctions. What is the advantage of a name, then, when one is denied a tombstone?”