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 "I bid you welcome, Monsieur le Vicomte Anne," said he, looking at me hard with his pale eyes, but not moving on his pillows. "I have sent for you, and I thank you for the obliging expedition you have shown. It is my misfortune that I cannot rise to receive you. I trust you have been reasonably well entertained?"

"Monsieur mon oncle," I said, bowing very low, "I am come at the summons of the head of my family."

"It is well," he said. "Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news—if that can be called news that is already twenty years old—of how I have the pleasure to see you here."

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.

"That is soon told, monseigneur," said I. "I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog." "You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable affair; it is painful to me. My nephew, your father, was a man who would not be advised," said he. "Tell me, if you please, simply of yourself."

"I am afraid I must run the risk of harrowing your sensibility in the beginning," said I, with a bitter smile, "because my story begins at the foot of the guillotine. When the list came out that night, and her name was there, I was already old enough, not in years but in sad experience, to understand the extent of my misfortune. She" I paused. "Enough that she arranged with a friend, Madame de Chasseradès, that she should take charge of me, and by the favour of our jailors I was suffered to remain in the shelter of the Abbaye. That was