the mirrors on his way out.

“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last door on his

way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, “to the Devil!”

With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had

shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in

manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent

paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on

it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly

pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or

dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided.

They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be

occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint

pulsation: then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the

whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of

helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and

the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and

thin; still, in the effect the face made, it was a handsome face, and

a remarkable one.

Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his

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carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at

the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and

Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared

under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the

common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely

escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were

charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man

brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The

complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf

city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways,

the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and

maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But few cared

enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as

in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their

difficulties as they could.

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of

consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage

dashed though the streets and swept round corners, with women

screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching

children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a

fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there

was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and

plunged.

But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would

not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and

leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened

valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the

horses’ bridles.

“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly looking out.