My father never missed the papers; and when the players returned I lost no time, but addressed myself to their manager, who made me recite some verses, applauded me highly, declared he wanted a new star, and that if I would steal away from my gallipots and join the company a mile from Auch, I should meet with my desert. I took him at his word, and easily executed my plan during the apothecary's absence. My name was soon changed to Achilles Lefranc, and the provincial spectators found out that I was a genius of a superior class. Ambition, the fault of gods, misled our little troop; and thinking to carry all before us, we went to Paris, obtained permission to perform, and chose a deep tragedy, at which the malicious Parisians roared with laughter from beginning to end. We slunk out of Paris in the middle of the night, but the bond of union was gone amongst us, and we dispersed. Since then I have hawked my talents from village to village, and from company to company; sometimes I have risen to the highest flights of tragedy, and have trod the stage as a king or a hero, and at others I have descended to the lowest walk of comedy, and, for the sake of a mere dinner, performed the part of jester at a marriage entertainment or a _fête de village_; I have been applauded and hissed, wept at and laughed at, but I have always contrived to make my way through the world, till here I am at last your lordship's--humble servant." CHAPTER XXI. The player's account of himself had interested me more than he knew, especially that part of it which referred to the unfortunate Count de Bagnols. There seemed something extraordinary in the chance, which threw circumstance after circumstance of his history upon my knowledge; and I felt a superstitious sort of feeling about it, which was weak, I own, but which was pardonable perhaps in a mind labouring like mine under a high degree of morbid excitement. I fancied that I was destined to be the Count's avenger; and I felt, at the same time, that I should be doing human nature good service in ridding the world of such a man as the Marquis de St. Brie; nor did I believe that the eye of Heaven could look frowningly upon so signal an act of justice. I reasoned, finely too, upon the right of an individual to execute that retributive punishment which either the laws of his country were inadequate to perform, or its judges unwilling to enforce. But where was there ever yet a deed unsusceptible of fine reasoning to justify it to the doer? Acts well nigh as black as the revolt of Satan have met able defenders in their day; and in the prejudiced tribunal of my own bosom I easily found a voice to sanction what I had already determined.