lightning, and I said to myself inwardly: ‘Here is thy vineyard!’ I came here, and you see, monsieur, that my history is very simple and uneventful.” At this instant Limoges came into sight, bathed in the last rays of the setting sun. When the women saw it they could not restrain their tears; they wept aloud. IX. DENISE The young man whom these two different loves were now on their way to comfort, who excited so much artless curiosity, so much spurious sympathy and true solicitude, was lying on his prison pallet in one of the condemned cells. A spy watched beside the door to catch, if possible, any words that might escape him, either in sleep or in one of his violent furies; so anxious were the officers of justice to exhaust all human means of discovering Jean-Francois Tascheron’s accomplice and recover the sums stolen. The des Vanneaulx had promised a reward to the police, and the police kept constant watch on the obstinate silence of the prisoner. When the man on duty looked through a loophole made for the purpose he saw the convict always in the same position, bound in the straight-jacket, his head secured by a leather thong ever since he had attempted to tear the stuff of the jacket with his teeth. Jean-Francois gazed steadily at the ceiling with a fixed and despairing eye, a burning eye, as if reddened by the terrible thoughts behind it. He was a living image of the antique Prometheus; the memory of some lost happiness gnawed at his heart. When the solicitor-general himself went to see him that magistrate could not help testifying his surprise at a character so obstinately persistent. No sooner did any one enter his cell than Jean-Francois flew into a frenzy which exceeded the limits known to physicians for such attacks. The moment he heard the key turn in the lock or the bolts of the barred door slide, a light foam whitened his lips.