streets of Paris and sought death at the barricades, but in vain. Thenardier's oldest daughter, disguised as a man, fell at his side, but he was unharmed. Then he wrote a farewell note to Cosette, telling her he must surely die in the next day's attack upon the barricade, and sent it to her by the hand of Gavroche, a street gamin. Gavroche delivered it, came back, and was killed in the fight. Valjean also came, and fought by the side of Marius. Javert had been taken prisoner, and doomed to death, and Valjean was appointed his executioner. Instead of killing him, he set him at liberty. "I would rather you killed me!" said Javert.

But

At last the barricade was taken. Valjean, carrying the wounded and unconscious Marius in his arms, escaped, descended into the sewers for a hiding place from the relentless Javert, who was again on his track, and finally reached an open place on the river-bank, where he imagined himself secure.

Then he turned and beheld Javert at his heels. He was so covered with dirt that Javert did not recognize him, but asked "Who are you?"

"I am Jean Valjean!" "What are you doing here? Who is this man?"

He did not speak with his former contempt and rudeness.

"It was about him that I was going to speak," said Valjean, his peculiar tone seeming to arouse Javert. "Dispose of me as you please, but help me to have him taken home. That is all I beg of you."

Javert called a cab-driver. They found in Marius's pocket the address of his grandfather, M. Gillenormand, and took

him thither, leaving him there almost dead. Then Valjean asked Javert another favor, that he might revisit his own home for a few minutes. Javert assented, and when they reached the house, said, "Go in; I will wait here." But when Valjean returned the street was deserted. Javert had disappeared.

The police inspector walked away, slowly and half-dazed, to one of the bridges of the Seine. He was astounded by one thing, that Valjean should forgive him, and another petrified him, that he should pardon the convict.

What was he to do now? To liberate Valjean was bad, and so to leave him free. In the first case, the officer of authority fell lower than the galleyslave; in the second, a jail-bird soared higher than the trained hawk and struck his talons into him. In both cases, dishonor to Javert. There was a fall in any course he chose.

He suffered the strange pains of a conscience suddenly cured of dim vision. He saw what it was repugnant for him to see. He felt vacant, useless, wrenched from his former lines, diverted, discharged. For his authority was dead. There was no reason for him to exist.

All at once he took off his hat and laid it on the flags this side of the balustrade. In the moment after, a tall, black figure, which might be taken by the beholder at a distance as a shade, appeared standing on the parapet, bent toward the Seine, then rose and fell straight into the shadows; a dull splash was heard, the night alone was in the secret of the spasms of the obscurely struggling form disappearing under the surge.

For a long time Marius lay near death. Then convalescence set in. His grand

Cosette.

"Yes; you shall have your pretty little loved one," continued the old gentleman. "She has been calling every day, in the form of an old gentleman, eager to have the latest news of you. Since you were shot down, she has been spending her time weeping her eyes out and scraping lint for you. I have inquired about it. She lives in Homme-armée Street, at No. 7. Ha! ha! d'ye see the point we are at? You long for her? It shall not be for long! You shall have her."

So in due time Marius and Cosette were married, and installed in the best rooms of the Gillenormand mansion.

Valjean endowed Cosette with a fortune of 600,000 francs. But under a pretext of illness did not attend the wedding, and after it went to live alone in his old home.

Then, after a desperate battle with himself, he told Marius who he was-an ex-convict, now liable to be sent back to the galleys. Marius recoiled from him in horror. But it was finally agreed that Valjean should come every day, if he wished, to call on Cosette, and that the secret should be inviolably kept. Marius supposed that Valjean had murdered. "M. Madeleine" and stolen his fortune, and had also killed Javert, and he accordingly regarded him with loathing, and thought of returning to him all

But one day Thenardier called upon him, to demand money for telling him a great secret about Valjean. Marius scornfully told him he knew it all, already. Then, in his confusion, Thenardier blurted out the truth, that Valjean had not murdered "M. Madeleine," but was himself identical with him, and had not killed Javert, who had been found drowned. Marius could not restrain a cry of delight.

"Well, then, this wretch is an admirable man! That fortune was truly his! He is Madeleine, the saver of the country-its providence! He is Javert's deliverer! He is a hero-a saint!"

Forthwith Marius and Cosette hastened to Valjean, to atone with their love for all the doubts and ill-feelings Marius had cherished. They found him ill, indeed dying. Marius told him all he had learned, and begged forgiveness for his doubts. Valjean, happy in their perfect confidence and love, took them to his heart and blessed them.

"I am dying happy," he said. "Let me lay my hands on your beloved heads-"

Cosette and Marius fell on their knees, suffocated with tears, and on each guided a hand of Valjean's. Those august hands did not move again.

He had thrown his head back, and the lustre from the two candles, illumined it; the white face was upturned to the heavens. He let them cover his hands with kisses. He was dead.

IN a certain village of La Mancha there lived in former years an old-fashioned gentleman who was much given to poring over books of romance and reading the doings of knights in the days of chivalry. His name was Quixada, which signifies Lantern-Jaws. His whole household consisted of a housekeeper of about forty years, a niece of twenty, and a man of all work. He was a worthy man, but he read these romances by day and night until they seemed as true to him as the most authentic history, and until he resolved himself to enter upon the career of a knight-errant, in emulation of Amadis de Gaul.

So he scoured up an old suit of armor that had belonged to his great-grandfather, filling out a lacking part of the helmet with pasteboard and bits of iron. Then he got his old horse out of the stable, an ancient rack of skin and bones, and gave him the name of Rozinante, from Rozin, a common pack-horse, and ante, before. He began to call himself Don Quixote de la Mancha. Finally, since every knight must have a lady in whose name to fight, he selected a young

peasant girl of that neighborhood, named Aldonza Lorenzo, and called her the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso.

Thus prepared for a chivalric career, he set forth and traveled all day without meeting with any adventure.

Toward the evening he and his horse being heartily tired and almost famished, Don Quixote looked about him, in hopes to discover some castle, or at least some shepherd's cottage, there to repose and refresh himself; and at last, near the road which he kept, he espied an inn, a most welcome sight to his longing eyes. Hastening toward it with all the speed he could, he got thither just at the close of the evening. There stood by chance at the inn-door two young female adventurers, who were going to Seville with some carriers that happened to take up their lodgings there that very evening; and as whatever our knight-errant saw, thought, or imagined was all of a romantic cast, and appeared to him altogether after the manner of his favorite books, he no sooner saw the inn but he fancied it to be a castle fenced with four towers, and lofty pinnacles glittering with silver,