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and priests, but which was not habitual with him. This man,
after all, this member of the Convention, this representa-
tive of the people, had been one of the powerful ones of the
earth; for the first time in his life, probably, the Bishop felt
in a mood to be severe.
Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been
surveying him with a modest cordiality, in which one could
have distinguished, possibly, that humility which is so fit-
ting when one is on the verge of returning to dust.
The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained
his curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault,
could not refrain from examining the member of the Con-
vention with an attention which, as it did not have its course
in sympathy, would have served his conscience as a matter
of reproach, in connection with any other man. A member
of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of
being outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity.
G——, calm, his body almost upright, his voice vibrating,
was one of those octogenarians who form the subject of as-
tonishment to the physiologist. The Revolution had many
of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man
one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so
near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In
his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of
his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert
death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre,
would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken
the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed it so.
There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were mo-