One morning, three men were seen entering Paris on foot through the Porte St. Denis. It was a fine day in spring, and the old city looked gay with its loitering passengers and gaudy shops, and under that clear blue exhilarating sky so peculiar to France. Two of these men walked abreast, the other preceded them a few steps. The one who went first--thin, pale, and threadbare--yet seemed to suffer the least from fatigue; he walked with a long, swinging, noiseless stride, looking to the right and left from the corners of his eyes. Of the two who followed, one was handsome and finely formed, but of swarthy complexion, young, yet with a look of care; the other, of sturdy frame, leaned on a thick stick, and his eyes were gloomily cast down. “Philip,” said the last, “in coming back to Paris--I feel that I am coming back to my grave!” “Pooh--you were equally despondent in our excursions elsewhere.” “Because I was always thinking of poor Fanny, and because--because--Birnie was ever at me with his horrible temptations!” “Birnie! I loathe the man! Will you never get rid of him?” “I cannot! Hush! he will hear us. How unlucky we have been! and now without a sou in our pockets--here the dunghill--there the gaol! We are in his power at last!” “His power! what mean you?” “What ho! Birnie!” cried Gawtrey, unheeding Morton’s question. “Let us halt and breakfast: I am tired.” “You forget!--we have no money till we make it,” returned Birnie, coldly.--“Come to the serrurier’s he will trust us.” CHAPTER VIII. “Gaunt Beggary and Scorn with many bell-hounds more.” THOMSON’S Castle of Indolence. “The other was a fell, despiteful fiend.”--Ibid. “Your happiness behold! then straight a wand He waved, an anti-magic power that hath Truth from illusive falsehood to command.”--Ibid. “But what for us, the children of despair, Brought to the brink of hell--what hope remains? RESOLVE, RESOLVE!”--Ibid. It may be observed that there are certain years in which in a civilised country some particular crime comes into vogue. It flares its season, and then burns out. Thus at one time we have Burking--at another, Swingism--now, suicide is in vogue--now, poisoning tradespeople in apple-dumplings--now, little boys stab each other with penknives--now, common soldiers shoot at their sergeants. Almost every year there is one crime peculiar to it; a sort of annual which overruns the country but does not bloom again. Unquestionably the Press has a great deal to do with these epidemics. Let a newspaper once give an account of some out-of-the-way atrocity that has the charm of being novel, and certain depraved minds fasten to it like leeches. They brood over and revolve it--the idea grows up, a horrid phantasmalian monomania; and all of a sudden, in a hundred different places, the one seed sown by the leaden types springs up into foul flowering.