Denise hastened to carry a lamp into Marcel's cabinet, where she left her uncle and her lover closeted together. CHAPTER III. DARKENING SHADOWS. Once alone in his cabinet with Jocelyn, Marcel sank into profound pensiveness. The cheerful serenity that had pervaded his bearing during the conversation with his wife was now replaced by an expression of melancholic seriousness. For a few minutes he contemplated in silence his studious retreat, the witness of the meditations of his riper years. Finally, leaning over a large table that was strewn with parchments, he emitted a sigh and said to Jocelyn: "How many nights have I not spent here, elaborating by the light of this little lamp the plans of reform that some day, hap now what hap may, will be the solid basis for the emancipation of our people, the evangelium of the rights of the citizen!... Here have been spent the happiest, the most beautiful days of my life!... What a pure joy did I not then taste!... Sustained by my ardent love for justice and right, and enlightened by the lessons of the past, I soared upward to the sublimest theories of freedom!... I then was ignorant of the deceptions, the evils, the delays, the struggles, the storms that the practice and application of truth inevitably engender!... I then saw truth in its radiant simplicity!... I did not then reckon with human passions!... But that matters not!... Truth is absolute.... Sooner or later it imposes itself upon humanity that ever is on the march, progresses and improves itself...." Jocelyn listened to Marcel in mute reverence. He now beheld that illustrious man wrapt with pensive brow in ever deeper meditation. A few instants later, Marcel stepped towards an oaken trunk that age had blackened. He opened it, took out several rolls of parchment, lay them on the table, pushed a stool near and sat down to write. His virile and characterful face betrayed by degrees increasing sadness, and, to Jocelyn's surprise several tears dropped from the provost's eyes upon the lines that he was writing. Tears from so great a man, from a man of such energy, endowed with ancient stoicism, profoundly impressed the champion. Jocelyn's heart ached, and he began to suspect Marcel's motives for the affectation of safety that he had shortly before displayed before his family. Jocelyn saw him dry his tears and seal the parchment with black wax, using for that purpose the impress of a large gold ring that he wore on his finger, after which, placing the scroll together with the others that he had taken from the trunk, he made one package of all, sealed them together and replaced them in the trunk. He then locked it, and giving the key to Jocelyn, said to him deliberately: