good fortune to witness. Though my recitals of the daily scenes of that chronic phase of French polities, seemed to interest my host and his family, they appeared to have little effect upon the other guest. Interested as I was in the circumstances I was relating, I was mysteriously, and, despite myself, more interested in that consolidated embodiment of moral and physical revolution that sat directly opposite me. There seemed to be a tacit understanding with all the parties present, myself included, though I knew not why, that nothing should be said that was not general in its character. Though I knew, from a slight incidental remark, that my host and his friend had only met that day after a separation of years, I was not surprised at their making me and my experiences topics of unflagging conversation.
In due season the dishes and the dessert were removed, and then, the ladies retiring, left us to our wine and ourselves. There was an uneasy pause after the ladies had left us—an almost embarrassing silence. My topics were exhausted. It seemed as if they mutually agreed that I could no longer, by any miscellaneous gossip, keep them from some positive allusion to the past. Our host filled his glass with claret and passed the decanter to me.
After I had filled my glass, I naturally pushed the wine across the table to the stranger, when the attention of my host and my own was riveted upon him. His head was bent upon the table. We could not see his face, but we saw that his muscular hands were clenched together, and his shoulders heaved up and down with convulsive motion. Where his temple was exposed to our view, I saw a rapid movement as of blood coursing to his brain. This lasted but a moment. The face of the host, too, had undergone a change as suddenly; tears stood in his hitherto happy and jovial eyes; his lips quivered, and be arose from his sent, and, approaching his friend, placed his hand upon his head. There sat that stern, apparently unsympathizing man, his whole system heaving with some long-suppressed and all-overmastering emotion; and over him the lawyer, accustomed in chamber and in court-room to scenes of suffering arising from outraged justice, or terror from detected guilt, now quivering, weeping, at his own table, at the mere spectacle of a depressed head
