When I had learnt his tale, I told him mine, saying that I was a poor _perruquier-barbier_ who had left his country for a while to complete his art studies, and who, happening to fall in love with his employer's daughter, had, through the jealousy and malice of a rival, who had falsely accused him, found himself imprisoned in the Bastille, and condemned to death. He was touched with my tale as I had been with his, for our histories had something in common. We were both in love, in prison, and condemned to death. We wept together, we embraced, we kissed (Frenchmen always kiss); and though he was a gentleman of noble family, and I only a lowly barber, yet, on the brink of the grave, all distinctions are levelled, so we embraced, and called ourselves brothers in adversity. How I prayed and longed that our lives might be spared, that we might the longer enjoy each other's friendship, or that we might quit this world in each other's company! But fate willed it otherwise. On the morrow, he whom I had learnt to love as a brother was torn from me and led to the scaffold. My life seemed now a blank. Whilst my friend lived in his troubles, I forgot my own; now that he was no more I began to realise all the horrors of my situation. At length the eve of my execution arrived. I tried to give myself up wholly to pious meditation, so throwing myself down in the corner of my cell, I endeavoured to recall all my past life, to repent of my sins, and pray for a speedy and peaceful end; but then the guillotine rose up before me in all its terrors, and bodily fear would usurp the place of holier thoughts. The nearer the hour drew, the more vividly everything painted itself to my mind's eye. I must leave Pauline without a word of farewell. The heartless turnkey, inured to scenes of death and misery, would witness me depart to execution without a tear. Then the insolence of the brutal guard, the gaping crowd, the scaffold, and surly executioner, the cold steel close to my neck, one terrible shock and then--then--eternity--a vast blank--an unexpected world--doubt, suspense, _perhaps_, total annihilation.