I gazed for a long time on that file of white dresses which, in the growing darkness, looked like a procession of ghosts. I heaved a sigh when it had disappeared. My first dream had just vanished, my first illusion been shattered! CHAPTER VIII I leave Villers-Cotterets to be second or third clerk at Crespy--M. Lefèvre--His character--My journeys to Villers-Cotterets--The _Pélerinage à Ermenonville_--Athénaïs--New matter sent to Adolphe--An uncontrollable desire to pay a visit to Paris--How this desire was accomplished--The journey--Hôtel des Vieux-Augustins--Adolphe-_Sylla_--Talma During my absence a place had been offered me as second or third clerk, I do not know exactly which, with M. Lefèvre, a lawyer at Crespy. It was a very desirable place, because the clerks were lodged and boarded. My keep had become such a burden on my poor mother, that she consented for the second time to part with me in order to save my food. She made up my little bit of packing--not much bigger than a Savoyard's on leaving his mountains--and off I set. It was three and a half leagues from Villers-Cotterets to Crespy: I did the journey on foot one fine evening, and I duly arrived at M. Lefèvre's. M. Lefèvre was, at that period, a fairly good-looking man of thirty-four or thirty-five, with dark brown hair, a very pale complexion, and a well-worn appearance physically. You could recognise he was a man who had lived a long while in Paris, who had taken many permissible pleasures, and still more forbidden ones. Although M. Lefèvre was confined to a little provincial town, he might be styled a lawyer of the old school: he had ceremonious ways with his clients, ceremonious manners with us, lofty domineering airs with the world at large. M. Lefèvre seemed to say to all those who had business with him, "Pray appreciate the honour I am bestowing upon you and your town, in condescending to be a lawyer in the capital of a canton when I might have been in practice in Paris." There was one thing that specially called forth from me feelings of admiration for M. Lefèvre, and it was this: he went to the capital, as they call it in Crespy, some eight or ten times a year, and he never lowered himself to take the diligence: when he wanted a conveyance he would call the gardener. "Pierre," he would say, "I am going to-morrow, or this evening, to Paris; see that the post-horses are ready in the chaise at such and such an hour."