It was after midnight. On the second floor of the pavilion once inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library. The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs, and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of papers, pamphlets, manuscripts and charts. Over the bookcases stood marble busts of Danton, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Armand Carrel, the Duc de St. Simon and other great men whose names are identified with France; between the windows looking out on the garden, shrouded in shrubs and creeping plants, hung a full-length and magnificent picture of Fourier. Near the centre of the apartment stood a vast table covered with books, papers, manuscripts and writing materials, beside which stood one of those sombre and massive arm-chairs, on the possession of which the former proprietor had so felicitated himself, bearing on a carved shield the fleur-de-lis of the Louvre, and in whose sumptuous and antique embrace had, perhaps, reposed a Richelieu, a Mazarin or a Sully. The windows were hung with heavy tapestry of ancient pattern and rich dye, and also the walls, save where covered with books. A soft and summery atmosphere, the warmth of which emanated from concealed furnaces, neutralized the chill of an autumnal night, and the mellow chiaro-oscuro of a vast astral diffused its lunar effulgence on all around. Within this chamber was a man, who, with arms crossed upon his bosom and eyes fastened in profound and seemingly mournful contemplation upon the floor, slowly paced from one extremity of the spacious apartment to the other. This man was M. Dantes, representative of Marseilles in the French Chamber of Deputies. "At last, at last," he murmured, "the avenging Nemesis ceases to gnaw! At length the angel Peace begins to smile! The tempest, which, for nearly thirty years, has raved and swelled in my heart, begins to lull! At length I commence to live--at length I realize and pursue life's true end. Let me reflect," he continued, after a pause, "let me review the past. The past! alas! my past is a painful blank! At twenty, from the very marriage-feast, from the side of her whom more than life I loved, I was torn by the envy of one man and the jealousy of another, and then, by the ambition of a third, to whom nothing was crime if it but ministered to that unhallowed impulse, I was plunged into a dungeon, whose counterpart only the vaults of hell can furnish. For fourteen long years I was the tenant of a sombre tomb. The agony, the despair of those awful years--oh! God! oh! God!" and he shuddered and clasped his hands over his head as if to crush the recollection.