Les Arènes will be well searched some day--perhaps very soon; it is too
well known as having been an old hiding-place. Every corner--this among
the rest--is known to outcasts, many of them of bad reputation, who, for
a morsel of bread, would give up St. Paul or St. Peter. All are not so,
however, and those I am now among have a kind of the honor which exists
among thieves. Do not depend too much on it, however."

And with this very unsatisfactory speech, he left us. My father, after
brooding on what he had said for some time, knelt down, and was long in
prayer: then he murmured, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep:
for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety." And I knew soon, by
his breathing, that he had indeed found rest in sleep. For me, I could
not close my eyes: the text that dwelt in my mind was, "My soul is
among lions." I thought of Madame Laccassagne and the other poor
women wandering in the fields, and pictured a thousand distressing
circumstances. Our solitary oil-lamp was beginning to languish for want
of trimming, and I thought, "What if it should leave us in darkness
altogether, and we should never know when it is day?" and dwelt on the
Egyptians in the plague of darkness, when none of them rose from his
place for three days. I was so feverish that it seemed to me a darkness
like that would madden me--I must dash my head against the wall, or do
something desperate; and I thought of Jonah in the whale's belly, when
the waters compassed him round about, and his soul fainted in that
hideous darkness; and again it was "three days." Then I thought, "Why
three days?" Was it because the Son of Man was three days in the heart
of the earth? And shall we remain here in this subterranean darkness
three days?

Just as the lamp seemed going out my loved mother stole out of the inner
dungeon, and trimmed it; then noiselessly stole to my side, and, seeing