“Then it is very strange that he does not feel hungry and wake up,” retorted the miller’s wife; she had just prepared breakfast for yesterday’s chance guest. “A play-actor, is he?” she continued. “Where will he be going? It is too early yet for the fair at Angoulême.” But neither the miller nor his wife suspected that (actors, princes, and bishops apart) there is a kind of being who is both prince and actor, and invested besides with a magnificent order of priesthood--that the Poet seems to do nothing, yet reigns over all humanity when he can paint humanity. “What can he be?” Courtois asked of his wife. “Suppose it should be dangerous to take him in?” queried she. “Pooh! thieves look more alive than that; we should have been robbed by this time,” returned her spouse. “I am neither a prince nor a thief, nor a bishop nor an actor,” Lucien said wearily; he must have overheard the colloquy through the window, and now he suddenly appeared. “I am poor, I am tired out, I have come on foot from Paris. My name is Lucien de Rubempré, and my father was M. Chardon, who used to have Postel’s business in L’Houmeau. My sister married David Séchard, the printer in the Place du Mûrier at Angoulême.” “Stop a bit,” said the miller, “that printer is the son of the old skinflint who farms his own land at Marsac, isn’t he?” “The very same,” said Lucien. “He is a queer kind of father, he is!” Courtois continued. “He is worth two hundred thousand francs and more, without counting his money-box, and he has sold his son up, they say.” When body and soul have been broken by a prolonged painful struggle, there comes a crisis when a strong nature braces itself for greater effort; but those who give way under the strain either die or sink into unconsciousness like death. That hour of crisis had struck for Lucien; at the vague rumor of the catastrophe that had befallen David he seemed almost ready to succumb. “Oh! my sister!” he cried. “Oh, God! what have I done? Base wretch that I am!” He dropped down on the wooden bench, looking white and powerless as a dying man; the miller’s wife brought out a bowl of milk and made him drink, but he begged the miller to help him back to his bed, and asked to be forgiven for bringing a dying man into their house. He thought his last hour had come. With the shadow of death, thoughts of religion crossed a brain so quick to conceive picturesque fancies; he would see the curé, he would confess and receive the last sacraments. The moan, uttered in the faint voice by a young man with such a comely face and figure, went to Mme. Courtois’ heart. “I say, little man, just take the horse and go to Marsac and ask Dr. Marron to come and see this young man; he is in a very bad way, it seems to me, and you might bring the curé as well. Perhaps they may know more about that printer in the Place du Mûrier than you do, for Postel married M. Marron’s daughter.”