blood rush to his face.

Madame Desvarennes's short letter suggested it. That his betrothed was
lost to him he understood, but he would not admit it. How was it
possible that Micheline should forget him? All his childhood passed
before his mind. He remembered the sweet and artless evidences of
affection which the young girl had given him. And yet she no longer
loved him! It was her own mother who said so. After that could he still
hope?

A prey to this deep trouble, Pierre entered Paris. On finding himself
face to face with Cayrol, the young man's first idea was, as Cayrol had
guessed, to cry out, "What's going on? Is all lost to me?" A sort of
anxious modesty kept back the words on his lips. He would not admit that
he doubted. And, then, Cayrol would only have needed to answer that all
was over, and that he could put on mourning for his love. He turned
around, and went out.

The tumult of Paris surprised and stunned him. After spending a year in
the peaceful solitudes of Africa, to find himself amid the cries of
street-sellers, the rolling of carriages, and the incessant movement of
the great city, was too great a contrast to him. Pierre was overcome by
languor; his head seemed too heavy for his body to carry; he mechanically
entered a cab which conveyed him to the Hotel du Louvre. Through the
window, against the glass of which he tried to cool his heated forehead,
he saw pass in procession before his eyes, the Column of July, the church
of St. Paul, the Hotel de Ville in ruins, and the colonnade of the
Louvre.

An absurd idea took possession of him. He remembered that during the