show it to her. I was sharp-sighted and observing, and several times already I had found things in the street, the gold-piece would be only one find the more. Yes, that was a good plan; I decided on it and I turned over on my side to go to sleep. I could not sleep. I saw myself in my sister's presence telling her that lie. I felt, as I thought of it, that my cheeks would burn, and that all within me would cry out—what? My theft. Yes, a theft! To steal is to take something that does not belong to us, and that piece of gold did not belong to me. It belonged to the first beggar I met on the way home, and that beggar was the blind man at the Capucins. I suddenly heard him say, in that drawling voice of his, 'Thief—thief!' I was a thief. The thought wrung my heart with a feeling that was well-nigh intolerable. A thief! but that was the deepest of all disgraces! A thief! like the two men you and I once saw, don't you remember? one summer's evening crossing the Place d'Armes between two gendarmes,—in rags, their faces filthy with dust and sweat, their eyes surly, and their hands bound together with chains."
"I remember that your Cousin Lucien was with us on that occasion," I remarked.
"Well," continued Claude, "that picture of shame possessed me, oppressed me, crushed me, and with it came such intense disgust for my own action that when I thought of that gilded sabre I
