Just then the court arose for a brief recess. Glad to breathe for a moment the fresher air, the spectators retired, the jury returned into their room, the sheriff and the crown prosecutor sauntered to their respective offices, the panel of petit jurors escaped in a body, the prisoner withdrew from the front of the dock, and sat unseen, pondering his chances between the gallows and an acquittal;--even the criers of the court abandoned their posts, and the younger members of the bar, who usually gathered round the advocate on these occasions, greeting him with pleasant compliments, and polite and reverent attentions, seeing him thus moody, drifted to the lobby, and in it paid court to some other, and secondary legal luminary who was there holding his levee. For awhile the advocate was left alone; then, emerging through the large folding doors into the corridor or lobby, now cumbered with the gossipping groups, through which he passed, solitary and in his gown, like Caesar in his robe passing through the midst of the conspirators, he proceeded past the doors of the offices occupied by the various crown officials. None spoke to the old man, he spoke to none, but his breast burned in agony, and a cloud was on his brow, like the smoke that wreathes around the crater of a volcano. His eyes seemed to shoot forth sparks, and his lips were muttering. Anger and sorrow were upon his face, but, turning a corner in the building, he was now hidden from the view of the multitude, and strode along the main corridor towards the huge double staircase that, midway therein, wound down to the dim entrance hall, that was divided by ponderous doors from the esplanade between the building and the busy street. A low, massive balustrade guarded the bridge-like portion of the corridor that hung between the heads of the twin flights of stairs, and whence, on looking down, was seen the paved abyss below. Approaching this part, what did he behold but the truant Narcisse, unconscious of his presence, ascending one of these flights of stairs. At the sight of him the gloomy elements of his soul seemed to flash within him and explode, rending all resolution of restraint, and leaving him a puppet of some destructive power, as he stood eyeing his son's approach, as the cat eyes that of the marauding mouse, motionless, allowing the culprit to draw near, until, detected, he stood, too nigh to retreat, too terrified to advance, and, as the fascinated bird drops into the open jaws of the serpent, fell resistless into the grasp of the advocate's extended hand. Then, as the firedamp when met by the miner's candle must explode, or as the liberated lightning must rend the cloud, though the latter be near Jove's throne, so the frenzied father, regardless, nay, forgetful, of the place, the time, the occasion, of himself and natural ties, assailed the scared Narcisse, clutching him by the throat with the strength of a maniac, and pushing him backwards against the balustrade, and holding him there transfixed, while, with eyes seething with wrath beneath the blanched, and big, umbrageous brows, and showing like a sudden opening of the infernal pit, he cried: "Demon, degenerate dog, where hast thou been walking to and fro in the earth? whom helping to devour? Ah, son of Satan, ah! Aroint thee, Imp, Abortion."