any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal social emancipation from
the personal proprieties. If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the
siege of Paris, with all the grace of a self-wrought redemption still
upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any she
could have found in prolonged existence as Madame Rameau; and a certain
modicum of this world's good things will, in that case, have been rescued
for worthier employment by Graham Vane. To that assurance nothing but
Lemercier's description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon (which will be
found in the Envoi) need be added for the satisfaction of our sense of
poetic justice and if on the mimic stage, from which they now
disappear, all these puppets have rightly played their parts in the drama
of an empire's fall, each will have helped to "point a moral" as well as
to "adorn a tale." _Valete et plaudite_!




CHAPTER THE LAST.

Among the refugees which the _convoi_ from Versailles disgorged on the
Paris station were two men, who, in pushing through the crowd, came
suddenly face to face with each other.

"Aha! Bon jour, M. Duplessis," said a burly voice. "Bon jour, M.
Louvier," replied Duplessis.

"How long have you left Bretagne?"

"On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in order to be
able to enter Paris the first day its gates were open. And you--where