A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page was opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme Being. (“Histoire de Jenni.”) The margin was covered with pencilled notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not go far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound of steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on the farther side of the bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from the eyes of a man who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person who had passed him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and approached the bed. The old man’s face was turned to the pillow; but he lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over his face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau with a key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with several rouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old man began to wake. He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the light now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment than terror. At last he sprang from his bed. “Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled and starved!--THOU!” The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on the floor. “What!” he said, “art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?” “Poison, boy! Ah!” shrieked the old man, and covered his face with his hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, “Jean! Jean! recall that word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murder one who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded it but for thee. Go! go!” and the old man, who in his passion had quitted his bed, fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the ground,--the mental agony more intolerable than that of the body, which he had so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a hard disdain. “What have I ever done to thee, wretch?” cried the old man,--“what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,--an outcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men call me a miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my heir, because Nature has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no more. Thou wouldst have had all when I was dead. Couldst thou not spare me a few months or days,--nothing to thy youth, all that is left to my age? What have I done to thee?” “Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will.” “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”