I dare say he wanted to be forgotten, but I shouldn't think he was much cheered by the news.

What would you say ?" Renouard, his legs stretched out and his chin on his breast, said nothing.

A sensation which was not curiosity, but rather a vague nervous anxiety, distinctly unpleasant, like a mysterious symptom of some malady, prevented him from getting up and going away.
"Mixed feelings," the Editor opined.

"Many fellows out here receive news from home with mixed feelings.

But what will his feelings be when he hears what I am going to tell you now?
For we know he has not heard yet.
Six months ago a city clerk, just a common drudge of finance, gets himself convicted of a common embezzlement or something of that kind.
Then seeing he's in for a long sentence he thinks of making his conscience comfortable, and makes a clean breast of an old story of tampered with, or else suppressed, documents, a story which clears altogether the honesty of our ruined gentleman.