Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/78

78 closed the iron door that led from this room, while two others held their lanterns close by. At length the door turned on its hinges, and from within came a puff of suffocating odor that cut their throats like glass; and for an instant their lanterns shone on the dead figure of the dwarf, crouched close to the wall.

A week passed. Joseph had returned home. He had not had the heart to stay in Paris and take enough interest in anything to fight for it. Irène had found him almost immediately in a hazardous barricade between the Pont des Arts and the Louvre. She did not return with him, but remained with a distant relative in Paris. The world was dark to young Joseph. His bravery did not deprive his nature of a pure emotion; and though for his age he had been much among men, he had not become worldly in the sense that he could outwit his purer feelings by dissipation, temporary attachments, or any other device in that category, to which many another would have appealed to suppress his sorrow.