indifferent glance, such as lights by accident on a passer-by. For him
it was a leave-taking of love and of woman; but his final and
strenuous questioning glance was neither understood nor felt by the
slight-natured woman there; her color did not rise, her eyes did not
droop. What was it to her? one more piece of adulation, yet another
sigh only prompted the delightful thought at night, "I looked rather
well to-day."

The young man quickly turned to another picture, and only left it when
she returned to her carriage. The horses started off, the final vision
of luxury and refinement went under an eclipse, just as that life of
his would soon do also. Slowly and sadly he followed the line of the
shops, listlessly examining the specimens on view. When the shops came
to an end, he reviewed the Louvre, the Institute, the towers of Notre
Dame, of the Palais, the Pont des Arts; all these public monuments
seemed to have taken their tone from the heavy gray sky.

Fitful gleams of light gave a foreboding look to Paris; like a pretty
woman, the city has mysterious fits of ugliness or beauty. So the
outer world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a
painful trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly
upon us by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame
seemed gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the
anguish of these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses
and the crowd seemed to surge to and fro in a mist before his eyes. He
tried to escape the agitation wrought in his mind by the revulsions of
his physical nature, and went toward the shop of a dealer in
antiquities, thinking to give a treat to his senses, and to spend the
interval till nightfall in bargaining over curiosities.