Every day my depression increased. My isolation, doubly painful from the gayety and life around me, seemed to mark me out as one unfit to know, and lessened me in my own esteem; and as I walked the long, dark alleys of the park, a weighty load upon my heart, I envied the meanest soldier of my troop, and would willingly have changed his fortune with my own. It was a relief to me even when night came--the shutters of my little room closed, my lamp lighted--to think that there at least I was free from the dark glances and sidelong looks of all I met; that I was alone with my own sorrow,--no contemptuous eye to pierce my sad heart, and see in my gloom a self-convicted criminal. Had I one, but one friend, to advise with! to pour out all my sufferings before him, and say, “Tell me, how shall I act? Am I to go on enduring? or where shall I, where can I, vindicate my fame?” With such sad thoughts for company, I sat one evening alone,--my mind now recurring to the early scenes of my childhood, and to that harsh teaching which even in infancy had marked me for suffering; now straying onward to a vision of the future I used to paint so brightly to myself,--when a gentle tap at the door aroused me. “Come in,” said I, carelessly, supposing it a sergeant of my troop. The door slowly opened, and a figure wrapped in a loose horseman's cloak entered. “Ah! Lieutenant, don't you know me?” said a voice, whose peculiar tone struck me as well known. “The Abbé d'Ervan, at your service.” “Indeed!” said I, starting with surprise, not less at the unexpected visitor himself than at the manner of his appearance. “Why, Abbé, you must have passed the sentinel.” “And so I did, my dear boy,” replied he, as he folded up his cloak leisurely on one chair, and seated himself on another opposite me. “Nothing wonderful in that, I suppose?” “But the countersign; they surely asked you for it?” “To be sure they did, and I gave it,--'Vincennes;' au easy word enough. But come, come! you are not going to play the police with me. I have taken you in, on my way back to St. Cloud, where I am stopping just now, to pay you a little visit and talk over the news.” “Pardon me once more, my dear abbé; but a young soldier may seem over-punctilious. Have you the privilege to pass through the royal park after nightfall?” “I think I have shown you that already, my most rigid inquisitor, otherwise I should not have known the password. Give me your report for to-morrow. Ah, here it is! What's the hour now?--a quarter to eleven. This will save you some trouble.” So saying, he took a pen and wrote in a large free hand, “The Abbe d'Ervan, from the château d'Ancre to St. Cloud.”