"In just a few minutes," said he, "I will go back to her. She must be there in the same place. Of course she must be there. It is no crime, after all. I will make it right to her,--it will be no crime. Quite the contrary. I will leave here in a few moments, when the clock strikes again, I swear it. Just as soon as the clock strikes again I will stop, I will go straight to where she is, I will take her up in my arms and will carry her home with me asleep. I have done her no harm; I have made a fortune for her. I will keep her with me and educate her; I will love her as I would a child of my own, and I will take care of her,--always, as long as she lives!" But the clock struck one, a quarter past, half-past, and Lucien was still there. Finally, a few minutes before two the man opposite him rose brusquely and said in a loud voice,-- "The bank is broken, gentlemen; this will do for to-night." Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of gamblers, who pressed around him in envious admiration, hurried out into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone bench. In a moment he saw by the light of the gas that the child was still there. "God be praised!" said he, and his heart gave a great throb of joy. Yes, here she was! He took her little hand in his. Poor little hand, how cold it was! He caught her under the arms and lifted her. Her head fell back, but she did not awake. "The happy sleep of childhood!" thought he. He pressed her close to his breast to warm her, and with a vague presentiment he tried to rouse her from this heavy sleep by kissing her eyelids. But he realized then with horror that through the child's half-open lids her eyes were dull, glassy, fixed. A distracting suspicion flashed through his mind. He put his lips to the child's mouth; he felt no breath. While Lucien had been building a fortune with the louis stolen from this little one, she, homeless and forsaken, had perished with cold. Lucien felt a suffocating knot at his throat. In his anguish he tried to cry out; and in the effort which he made he awoke from his nightmare, and found himself on the leather lounge in the gambling-room, where he had fallen asleep a little before midnight. The _garçon_ of the den had gone home at about five o'clock, and out of pity had not wakened him. A misty December dawn made the window-panes pale. Lucien went out, pawned his watch, took a bath, then went over to the Bureau of Recruits, and enlisted as a volunteer in the First Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique.