‘As long as I have a sou,’ he thought, ‘I’ll give it for the only luxury left me--solitude;’ and he jingled the few remaining coins in his pocket. They say an habitual criminal turned loose again upon society goes back to the scene of his offence--there is also a saying about a dog. Eugene was not an habitual criminal, he was only a victim of circumstances, playing on a formed character, yet he experienced a vague desire to return to the circumstances. He has told me that on that short but divinely lonely journey he was able to think his position over rationally. Item--he had no money, but many relations and friends, possibly, nay probably, willing to help him. Item--he was of the leisured class, unfitted for, _and_--a large _and_--disqualified for anything, except the merest manual labour. Item--he was physically strong, but happily, so he had been told, not unlikely to die at any minute. Item--he loved the best of everything. Finally, item--he had no reputation, and therefore no self-respect. He cast about in agony for any foundation on which to base a self-respect, and he found one, whether good or bad, who knows? In the circumstances, to the man, the only one. ‘Face the music; keep your head up; society has dealt you hard measure, treat it with the contempt with which it will undoubtedly treat you; if you let go the plank of your pride for but a minute, you drown.’ Nobody knew that he was free; his discharge had come a month earlier than expected, for some reason connected with certain services to the internal economy of the dim world. So far, good. The practical sum of his reflections came to this: ‘_Let_ no one know, avoid acquaintances, work in the docks till you have earned a passage to the diggings, and then’--he thought almost cheerfully of the ‘then.’ He stepped out of the carriage serenely; after all it was only his friends and acquaintances that mattered, a tiny eddy in the huge whirlpool of existence; easy enough to keep out of that eddy. He was always of a sanguine disposition; it had been very hard, I remember, at school to persuade him that he would infallibly miss his remove. It is the sanguine people upon whom circumstances play their pranks; luckily the payment of the piper is not to them so severe a tax as it is to the others--the pendulum swings very evenly. He lunched, to fortify the reaction; he lunched well; it was the first meal he had had for fourteen months--those in the dim world did not count. A cup of coffee and a cigar completing the fortification, he walked out of the station and along the crowded streets, enjoying the stir and bustle around him.