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The lights on the deck had gone out one after the other. The schooner slept. About an hour after Miss Moorsom had gone below without a sign or a word for him, Renouard got out of his hammock slung in the waist under the midship awning for he had given up all the accommodation below to his guests.

Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey Renouard. His resolution had failed him. Instead of following Felicia into the house, he had stopped under the three palms, and leaning against a smooth trunk had abandoned himself to a sense of an immense deception and the feeling of extreme fatigue.

M. Renouard, who was immediately informed, consented. They met together for the last time on the next day, the 3d, at eleven o'clock in the morning, an hour before the time mentioned in the judgment which we have read above, again in the Library of the Court of Cassation. M. Renouard was present.

Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the prosaic personality of the narrator. Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into the street. His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty creeping jealousy.

Instead of this, what steps did the High Court take? We have just seen. "Be off with you!" "We are going." We can imagine, after a very different fashion, the dialogue between Mathieu Molé and Vidocq. This line was left blank. It was filled in later on with the name of M. Renouard, Councillor of the Court of Cassation.

Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady on his feet. On the terrace the philosopher, after lighting a cigar, slipped his hand condescendingly under his "dear young friend's" arm. Renouard regarded him now with the profoundest mistrust.

Young man of good family and connections, going everywhere, yet not merely a man about town, but with a foot in the two big F's. Renouard lounging aimlessly in the room turned round: "And what the devil's that?" he asked faintly. "That's how I call it. There are the three R's at the bottom of the social edifice and the two F's on the top. See?" "Ha! Ha! Excellent! Ha! Ha!"

Nothing but ways and means and arrangements could be talked about. By fixing his eyes obstinately on the ground, which gave him an air of reflective sadness, Renouard managed to recover his self- possession. He used it to keep his voice in a low key and to measure his words on the great subject.

Patriarchal and delighted, old Dunster leaned forward a little, his eyes shining youthfully, two spots of colour at the roots of his white beard; and Renouard, glancing at the senile excitement, recalled the words heard on those subtle lips, adopted their scorn for his own, saw their truth before this man ready to be amused by the side of the grave. Yes!

One evening he appeared with a red flower in his button-hole. Nothing could have been more disgustingly fantastic. And he would also say to Renouard: "You may yet change the history of our country. For economic conditions do shape the history of nations. Eh? What?"