The chamber in question was furnished with elegant simplicity, its only ornaments consisting of a stand of modern arms and a range of shelves furnished with a well-chosen collection of books. Yet a sudden frenzy, or the hand of ungovernable rage, had reduced the quiet elegance which ordinarily reigned to a scene of frantic disorder. Chairs, tables, broken and overset; the carpet strewed with fragments of the crystal lamp kept burning through the night; the wax-lights and gilded chandelier which had contained them, lying around, gave manifest evidence of a fearful scene. M. d'Harville was about thirty years of age, with a fine, manly countenance, whose usual expression was mild and prepossessing, but now contracted, haggard, and livid. He had not changed his dress since the preceding evening; his throat was bare, his waistcoat thrown open, and on the torn and rumpled cambric of his shirt-front were drops of blood. His rich, dark hair, which generally fell in curls around his face, now hung in tangled wildness over his pale countenance. Wholly buried in the misery of his own thoughts, with folded arms, drooping head, and fixed, bloodshot eyes, M. d'Harville continued to pace his chamber; then, stopping opposite his fireplace, in which, spite of the almost unendurable severity of the frost of the past night, the fire had been allowed to expire, he took from the marble mantelpiece the following brief note, which he continued to read over and over with the most eager attention by the wan, pale light of the cold glimmer of an early winter morning: "To-morrow, at one o'clock, your wife has appointed to meet her favoured lover. Go to the Rue du Temple, No. 17, and you will obtain every requisite confirmation of this intelligence. "FROM ONE WHO PITIES YOU." Whilst reading these words, perused, with such deep anguish and sickness of heart, so many times through the long midnight hours, the blue, cold lips of M. d'Harville appeared convulsively to spell each syllable of this fatal _billet_. At this moment the chamber door opened and a servant entered; the man who now made his appearance was old, even gray-headed, but the expression of his countenance was frank and honest. The noise of the man entering disturbed not the marquis from his bitter contemplations; he merely turned his head without altering his position, but still grasped the letter in his clenched hands. "What do you want?" inquired he, sternly, of the servant. The man, instead of answering, continued to gaze with an air of painful surprise at the disordered state of the room; then, regarding his master more attentively, exclaimed: "Blood on your clothes! My lord, my lord! How is this? You have hurt yourself,--and all alone, too; why, my lord, did you not summon me, as of old, when these attacks came on?" "Begone!"