Vauquelas, as we have said before, had arrived at the trying age of three-score and ten, which, for the majority of men, is the age of decrepitude, that sinister forerunner of death; but time had neither bowed his head nor enfeebled his intellect. The clearness of his mind and the vigor of his limbs indicated that he was likely to be one of those centenarians who carry their years so lightly that they make us think with regret of that golden age in which the gods could confer immortality upon man. His eye still flashed with all the ardor of youth; and in his breast glowed a fire which age was powerless to quench. Vauquelas had formerly been a magistrate in Arras. A widower, without a child for whose fate he was compelled to tremble, he had seen the approach of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror without the slightest dismay; and the tenth of August found him in Paris, drawn there by the desire to increase his by no means contemptible fortune, and to win the favor of those who were then in power. He had taken up his abode in a modest mansion at the extremity of the Faubourg du Roule. The house stood in the centre of a garden, which was protected from the gaze of the curious by high walls that surrounded it on every side. Served by an old woman whom he had brought from Arras, he apparently lived the life of a recluse who desires to remain a stranger to the changes and emotions of the moment, and to end his days in peace and quietness. He received no visitors; and the people in the neighborhood thought him a poor man who had lost his family and squandered his money in unfortunate speculations. He never left the house until evening and always returned very late at night. A sans-culotte, who lived near by and whose suspicions had been aroused, followed him one evening. He fancied him a conspirator, he saw him enter the Palais Egalite, speak to several persons who seemed to listen to him with extreme deference, and afterwards repair to the house of one of the most influential members of the Committee of Public Safety, where he remained until two o'clock in the morning, and then returned home. The self-constituted spy concluded that he had to deal with one of the Committee's secret agents; and he was inspired with such wholesome awe that he decided to push his investigations no further.