letter might go by the morning mail. But when Pascal was seated before the white paper, with the pen between his fingers, a growing doubt, a feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, took possession of him. Was not this idea of his papers, this fine project of providing a guardian for them and saving them, a suggestion of his weakness, an excuse which he gave himself to bring back Clotilde, and see her again? Selfishness was at the bottom of it. He was thinking of himself, not of her. He saw her returning to this poor house, condemned to nurse a sick old man; and he saw her, above all, in her grief, in her awful agony, when he should terrify her some day by dropping down dead at her side. No, no! this was the dreadful moment which he must spare her, those days of cruel adieus and want afterward, a sad legacy which he could not leave her without thinking himself a criminal. Her tranquillity, her happiness only, were of any consequence, the rest did not matter. He would die in his hole, then, abandoned, happy to think her happy, to spare her the cruel blow of his death. As for saving his manuscripts he would perhaps find a means of doing so, he would try to have the strength to part from them and give them to Ramond. But even if all his papers were to perish, this was less of a sacrifice than to resign himself not to see her again, and he accepted it, and he was willing that nothing of him should survive, not even his thoughts, provided only that nothing of him should henceforth trouble her dear existence. Pascal accordingly proceeded to write one of his usual answers, which, by a great effort, he purposely made colorless and almost cold. Clotilde, in her last letter, without complaining of Maxime, had given it to be understood that her brother had lost his interest in her, preferring the society of Rose, the niece of Saccard’s hairdresser, the fair-haired young girl with the innocent look. And he suspected strongly some maneuver of the father: a cunning plan to obtain possession of the inheritance of the sick man, whose vices, so precocious formerly, gained new force as his last hour approached. But in spite of his uneasiness he gave Clotilde very good advice, telling her that she must make allowance for Maxime’s sufferings, that he had undoubtedly a great deal of affection and gratitude for her, in short that it was her duty to devote herself to him to the end. When he signed the letter tears dimmed his sight. It was his death warrant—a death like that of an old and solitary brute, a death without a kiss, without the touch of a friendly hand—that he was signing. Never again would he embrace her. Then doubts assailed him; was he doing right in leaving her amid such evil surroundings, where he felt that she was in continual contact with every species of wickedness?