“I have not observed their absence,” said Pelisson, who, at this moment, was turning his back to Fouquet, and walking the other way.

“I do not see M. Lyodot,” said Sorel, “who pays me my pension.”

“And I,” said the abbe, at the window, “do not see M. d’Eymeris, who owes me eleven hundred livres from our last game of brelan.”

“Sorel,” continued Fouquet, walking bent, and gloomily, “you will never receive your pension any more from M. Lyodot; and you, abbe, will never be paid you eleven hundred livres by M. d’Eymeris; for both are doomed to die.”

“To die!” exclaimed the whole assembly, arrested, in spite of