As I passed along the Rue St. Jacques, a beggar asked me for charity; and instinctively I put my hand in my pocket, when suddenly the thought of my own beggary came upon my mind, and with a sickness of heart impossible to describe, I drew my hand back, saying I had nothing for him. "Do! my good lord, do!" cried the mendicant; "may you never suffer such poverty as mine; and if you should--for who can tell in this uncertain life--and if you should, may you never be refused by those you beg of!" I could refuse no longer. It came so painfully home to my own bosom, that I gave him a small piece which I had received in change, and then walked on, feeling as if I had just cast away a fortune, instead of giving a piece of a few sols to a beggar. Oh, circumstance! circumstance! thou art like a juggler at a fair, making us see the same object with a thousand different hues as thou offerest thy many-coloured glasses to our eyes. Passing on, I found my way to the Palais Cardinal, where, after having gazed for a moment or two at the enormous pile of building before me, the thousand minute beauties of which the darkness had hidden from me the night before, I mounted the steps to leave my address, as I had been commanded. The doors of the palace, far from being guarded as I had previously found them, now seemed open to every one. Crowds of people of all classes were going in and coming out; and every sort of dress was there, from the princely _justaucorps_, whose arabesqued embroidery left scarcely an inch of the original stuff visible, to the threadbare pourpoint, whose long experience in the ways of the world had rendered it as polished and as smooth as the tongue of an old courtier. All was whisper, and smiles, and hurry, and bustle; and though every here and there an anxious face might be seen, giving shade to the picture, no one would have imagined that through those gates issued forth each day a thousand orders of death, of misery, and of despair. I entered with the rest; and as the way seemed open to every one, was walking on, when I soon found that all who passed were known; for hardly had I taken two steps across the vestibule, when an attendant placed himself in my way, asking my business. It was easily explained; and leading me into a small cabinet adjoining the hall, he took down a ponderous folio, and desired me to write my address. When I opened it I found it quite full; and the page took down another, wherein, at the end of many thousands of names, I wrote my own, with ink that I doubted not would prove true Lethe, and turned away even more hopeless than I came.