I smiled at my night attendant, who stared back at me in astonishment, and exclaimed---- "Why, sir, blest if you ain't a new man altogether. There, now!" I wrung his hand, and thanked him for all his past patience, kindness, and forbearance with such effusion that his eyes had tears in them. I had not spoken for weeks, and he heard my voice for the first time. That day, also, without any preamble or explanation, I gave the doctor and the chaplain and the governor my word of honor that I would not attempt my life again, or any one else's, and was believed and trusted on the spot; and they unstrapped me. I was never so touched in my life. In a week I recovered much of my strength; but I was an old man. That was a great change. Most people age gradually and imperceptibly. To me old age had come of a sudden--in a night, as it were; but with it, and suddenly also, the resigned and cheerful acquiescence, the mild serenity, that are its compensation and more. My hope, my certainty to be one with Mary some day--that is my haven, my heaven--a consummation of completeness beyond which there is nothing to wish for or imagine. Come what else may, that is safe, and that is all I care for. She was able to care for me, and for many other things besides, and I love her all the more for it; but I can only care for _her_. Sooner or later--a year--ten years; it does not matter much. I also am beginning to disbelieve in the existence of time. That waking was the gladdest in my life--gladder even than the waking in my condemned cell the morning after my sentence of death, when another black shadow passed away--that of the scaffold. Oh, Mary! What has she not done for me--what clouds has she not dispelled! When night came round again I made once more, step by step, the journey from the Porte de la Muette to the Mare d'Auteuil, with everything the same--the gay wedding-feast, the blue and silver courier, the merry guests singing _"Il etait un petit navire."_ Nothing was altered, even to the dull gray weather. But, oh, the difference to me! I longed to play at _bouchon_ with the hackney coachmen, or at _la balle au camp_ with my old schoolfellows. I could have even waltzed with "Monsieur Lartigue" and "le petit Cazal." I looked in Mere Manette's little mirror and saw my worn, gray, haggard, old face again; and liked it, and thought it quite good-looking. I sat down and rested by the fortifications as I had done the night before, for I was still tired, but with a most delicious fatigue; my very shabbiness was agreeable to me--_pauvre, mais honnete_. A convict, a madman, but a prince among men--still the beloved of Mary! And when at last I reached the spot I had always loved the best on earth ever since I first saw it as a child, I fell on my knees and wept for sheer excess of joy. It was mine indeed; it belonged to me as no land or water had ever belonged to any man before. Mary was not there, of course; I did not expect her.