How in two days had the flood of destiny burst, obliterating all his ancient landmarks! He was carried down like a dead thing. Should he drift, then?--or, if not, where strand and crawl ashore, a fragment of human wreck? “I clutch and stop myself,” he thought; “scramble out; lie half blind upon a little island of rest. The flood still washes my feet; but I will not yield to it. Then slowly it subsides; the old beautiful landmarks reveal themselves--soiled and stained, perhaps; but, they are dear to me, and I would not have my retrospect without them.” He paced wildly to and fro again. “I have been in the flood. What madness has it wrought in me!” “Pamela!” he whispered aloud in great emotion--“Pamela!” Yet his soul--though he believed it steadfast to its allegiance through all the numbing thunder of the race on which it had been borne--was rent by conflicting devils; for must not his sympathies at least extend to one who nursed a hopeless passion? “Oh!” he groaned in his heart, “if, upon my release, I could only find her gone, on her own initiative, out of my life!” “And so to leave you a heritage of everlasting remorse,” the fiends would cry. One moment he would be the brutal tyrant, another the slave to his own nature of kindness. He was, indeed, in a pitiable state of indetermination. And always, marking off the crawling hours, that sense of inner foreboding pattered loud or soft like the ticking of a death-watch. Pamela and Théroigne and Nicette! Vanity and vanity and vanity. And one Love had claimed, and one the hell of passion, and one---- He threw himself upon the floor, blaspheming, hugging himself in the ecstasy of this protracted torment. At last, completely worn out, he fell asleep. He awoke, having slumbered, despite the hardness of his couch, far into the morning. He could only recollect himself and his circumstances with a mastering effort. Sitting up, he saw his jailer standing by a little table that he had brought into the room. “What is that for?” he said. “The citizen’s meals.” “Meals! Good God! And has not the commissary yet touched his acme of folly? Has not M. Vergniaud yet called to effect my release?” The man shook his head. “Where did you overtake him?” said Ned desperately. “What was he doing that was so urgent when you delivered to him my note?” “He was conducting the actress Simon-Candeille to the theatre. I heard madame engage him to a _p’tit-souper_ when the play was over.” Ned turned away, sick at heart; then flashed round upon the man again in a fury. “The beast! the philosophic egoist! Thou must carry him another message from me.” “Truly, when I can,” said the jailer.