Luc, when he reached this spot, leant against the high rusty iron railings, and stared at the grass and the two trees. He was fatigued and hungry. A week ago his recent means of support had been taken from him. During the winter he had earned his living as a bookseller’s hack, by writing prefaces, by indexing, by correcting proofs, even by copying letters and delivering books. The work threatened him with utter blindness. He began to make many mistakes. At last another man was put in his place, and Luc was at a loss indeed. He had some time since taken a cheaper room, and he had sold everything he could sell. Yesterday, to pay the debt he owed for his poor lodging, he had parted with what he would not have sold for bread--what he had hoarded jealously so long--his sword: the sword his father had given him before he went to the war; a beautiful weapon of Toledo steel, with shell and quillons inlaid with gold. Half the price of it lay in Luc’s pocket, and this money caused him the first sensation of shame he had known in his life. He held on to the railings to steady himself, and looked at the peaceful enclosure of the ruined garden. His great dread was that he might live long enough to become an object of M. de Voltaire’s charity. He had winced from nothing yet, but he did wince from that. The second version of his book had been for long refused on account of the ill success of the first. After many endeavours, a bookseller had been at last persuaded to take it; but there remained a good deal to be done before the sheets were ready for the press, and Luc was too ill to write. “I must finish that,” he kept saying to himself. “I must finish that.” The fresh bare boughs, through which two little birds were flying, the long blades of grass moving slightly to and fro in the wind, even the noble lines of the empty house and the calm face of the broken statue, soothed Luc. “Why should I trouble about any of it?” he asked himself. “Once I am dead, I shall so soon forget it all.” He returned to the squalid little street, the miserable house where he lodged, and climbed to his room, which was dark and scarcely furnished at all. The narrow window looked blankly on the house opposite. There was no view, even over roofs, and the sun only entered for a brief while at early dawn. Luc, coughing painfully, latched the door, and feebly made his way to the table that stood beside the mattress on which he slept. He put his hand in his pocket, took out the money, and laid it, a little pile of silver pieces, on the table. “Should I die to-night, I suppose that would be enough to bury me,” he said to himself, with a little smile. A cry filled the room as water fills a glass into which it is flung suddenly--rang round and round walls and ceiling-- “Luc! Luc! _Luc!_” The Marquis turned in slow bewilderment; he dimly saw the figure of a man advancing from the window. “I have been waiting for you,” said this person, in a terribly moved voice.