lawyer's hand. "That is the first polite word I have heard since----"

The Colonel wept. Gratitude choked his voice. The appealing and
unutterable eloquence that lies in the eyes, in a gesture, even in
silence, entirely convinced Derville, and touched him deeply.

"Listen, monsieur," said he; "I have this evening won three hundred
francs at cards. I may very well lay out half that sum in making a man
happy. I will begin the inquiries and researches necessary to obtain
the documents of which you speak, and until they arrive I will give
you five francs a day. If you are Colonel Chabert, you will pardon the
smallness of the loan as it is coming from a young man who has his
fortune to make. Proceed."

The Colonel, as he called himself, sat for a moment motionless and
bewildered; the depth of his woes had no doubt destroyed his powers of
belief. Though he was eager in pursuit of his military distinction, of
his fortune, of himself, perhaps it was in obedience to the
inexplicable feeling, the latent germ in every man's heart, to which
we owe the experiments of alchemists, the passion for glory, the
discoveries of astronomy and of physics, everything which prompts man
to expand his being by multiplying himself through deeds or ideas. In
his mind the /Ego/ was now but a secondary object, just as the vanity
of success or the pleasures of winning become dearer to the gambler
than the object he has at stake. The young lawyer's words were as a
miracle to this man, for ten years repudiated by his wife, by justice,
by the whole social creation. To find in a lawyer's office the ten
gold pieces which had so long been refused him by so many people, and
in so many ways! The colonel was like the lady who, having been ill of
a fever for fifteen years, fancied she had some fresh complaint when