one of them, apparently unable to keep his grasp on a pole, was in
danger of death, and seemed to have been touched by the stone as it
passed him.

A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearing
and insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour's cabriolet had been driven
against the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches more
and the stone would have fallen on the baron's head. The groom was
dead, the carriage shattered. 'Twas an event for the whole
neighborhood, the newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour,
certain that he had not touched the boarding, complained; the case
went to court. Inquiry being made, it was shown that a small boy,
armed with a lath, had mounted guard and called to all foot-passengers
to keep away. The affair ended there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtained
no redress. He had lost his servant, and was confined to his bed for
some days, for the back of the carriage when shattered had bruised him
severely, and the nervous shock of the sudden surprise gave him a
fever. He did not, therefore, go to see Madame Jules.

Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, in
his repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogne
and was close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, the
axle-tree broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that the
breakage would have caused the two wheels to come together with force
enough to break his head, had it not been for the resistance of the
leather hood. Nevertheless, he was badly wounded in the side. For the
second time in ten days he was carried home in a fainting condition to
his terrified grandmother. This second accident gave him a feeling of
distrust; he thought, though vaguely, of Ferragus and Madame Jules. To
throw light on these suspicions he had the broken axle brought to his