And then they gathered closer around him and heard the promised story.

At the same hour Honore Grandissime, wrapping himself in a greatcoat and giving himself up to sad and somewhat bitter reflections, had wandered from the paternal house, and by and by from the grounds, not knowing why or whither, but after a time soliciting, at Frowenfeld's closing door, the favor of his company.

He had been feeling a kind of suffocation.

This it was that made him seek and prize the presence and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary.

He led him out to the edge of the river.