and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her
daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to
distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the
young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that
wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as
_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the
patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce
the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in
defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep,
or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might
sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the
innocent.

It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself
as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the
neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home;
and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It
was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary
house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A
printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall
pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._

Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall,
stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face,
an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon
than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home
among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their
favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a
pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty
dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the