With these words, which struck like a wintry chill into the heart of Florian, he took an old newspaper from his pocket-book. The unhappy fugitive received it with a shaking hand, and read a judicial summons from the authorities of D., seeking intelligence of a student, who had on a certain day quitted the university by the diligence for Normandy, and unaccountably disappeared. His Christian and surname, with an accurate description of his dress and person, were appended. Glancing fearfully down the page, he distinguished some particulars of a murder; his sight grew dim with terror; and after a vain attempt to read farther, he dropped the fatal document, and reeled back, breathless, and almost fainting, against the wall. "He is the very man!" muttered the headsman, whose keen eye had been intently fixed upon him during the perusal. "I never asked your real name, young man," he continued, "but now I know it. Your terrors would betray it to a child. How then are you, without fortitude to face the common evils of life, and bearing in every feature a betrayer, to escape the giant-grasp of the French police? And had this calamity never befallen you, how could you gain a support in a world, which, by your own confession, you have ever found ungenial and repulsive? Believe me, Florian! here, and here only, will you find safety, support, and happiness." "Happiness?" mournfully repeated Florian. "Yes, happiness!" rejoined the tempter. "You and Madelon love each other, and in every station, from the highest to the lowest, love is the salt of life, the balm and cordial of existence. My office descends from generation to generation; it insures to the holder not only a good house and landed property, but an income of no mean amount. Every traveller who passes my house pays me a toll, because fifty years since an inundation compelled the town to cut a high-road through my grandfather's garden. Of all these benefits I shall be deprived, when old and disabled, if my children disdain to follow my vocation; and if Madelon were to marry within the pale of that society which regards her father with abhorrence, my house and vineyard would be destroyed by the bigoted and furious populace, and too probably my innocent child along with them. Have you the heart, Florian, to hazard her destruction and your own, in preference to an office essential to the existence of civil society, and from which that obedience to the laws, which is the first duty of a good citizen, removes all self-reproach? With a due sense of the importance of your official duties, you will find yourself sustained in the performance of them; and a practised hand will soon give you firmness enough to follow a vocation attended with no personal risk; but if you determine to leave me, where will you find resolution to face the perils which surround you? and if you escape them, how are you to compete in the race of life with the daring and the fleet?"