"Dear Pisgah," read the text, "I am here at claim of restaurateur; shall die to-morrow at or before twelve o'clock, if Andy Plade don't fork over my subscription of two hundred francs. Andy Plade damned knave--no mistake! No living soul been to see me, except letter from Hon. Mr. Slidell. He has got sixteen thousand dollars in specie for Simp. Where's Simp, dogorn him! Hon. S. sent to Simp's house; understood he'd sailed for America. Requested Hon. S. to give me small part of money as Simp's next friend. Hon. S. declined. Population of prison very great. Damned scrub stock! Don't object to imprisonment as much as the fleas. Fleas bent on aiding my escape. If they crawl with me to-morrow night as far again as last night I'll be clear--no mistake! Live on soup, chiefly. Abhor soup. Had forty francs here first day, but debtor with one boot and spectacles won it at _picquet_. Restaurateur says bound to keep me here a thousand years if I don't sock--shall die--no mistake! Come see me, _toute suite_. Fetch pocket-comb, soap, and English Bible. "Yours, in deep waters, FRECKLE." "The whole world is in deep waters," said Pisgah, dismally. "So much the better for them; here goes for something stronger!" He repaired to the nearest drinking-saloon, and demanded a glass brimful of absinthe, at which all the garcons and patrons held up their hands while he drank it to the dregs. "Sacristie!" cried a man with mouth wide open, "that gentleman can drink clear laudanum." "I wish," thought Pisgah, with a pale face, "that it had been laudanum; I should have been dead by this time and all over. Why don't I get the _delirium tremens_? I should like to be crazy. Oh, ho, ho, ho!" he continued, laughing wildly, "to be in a hospital--nurses, soft bed, good food, pity--oh, ho! that would be a fate fit for an emperor." Here his eye caught something across the way which riveted it, and he took half a step forward, exultingly. A great _caserne_, or barrack, adjoined the Hotel de Ville, and twice every day, after breakfast and dinner, the soldiers within distributed the surplus of their rations to mendicants without. The latter were already assembling--laborers in neat, common clothing, with idlers and profligates not more forbidding, while a soldier on guard directed them where to rest and in what order or number to enter the building. Pisgah halted a moment with his heart in his throat. But he was very hungry, and his silver was half gone already; if he purchased a dinner, he might not be left with sufficient to obtain a bed for the night. "Great God!" he said aloud, lifting his clenched hands and swollen eyes to the stars, "am I, then, among the very dogs, that I should beg the crumbs of a common soldier?"