g souls do not sleep easily: indifference weighs them down.

They demand a mission--a motive for action--and faith.

Louis de Camors was yet to find his.

CHAPTER IV. A NEW ACTRESS IN A NOVEL ROLE

Louis de Camor's father had not I told him all in that last letter.

Instead of leaving him a fortune, he left him only embarrassments, for
he was three fourths ruined. The disorder of his affairs had begun
a long time before, and it was to repair them that he had married; a
process that had not proved successful. A large inheritance on which
he had relied as coming to his wife went elsewhere--to endow a charity
hospital. The Comte de Camors began a suit to recover it before the
tribunal of the Council of State, but compromised it for an annuity of
thirty thousand francs. This stopped at his death. He enjoyed, besides,
several fat sinecures, which his name, his social rank, and his personal
address secured him from some of the great insurance companies. But
these resources did not survive him; he only rented the house he had
occupied; and the young Comte de Camors found himself suddenly reduced
to the provision of his mother's dowry--a bare pittance to a man of his
habits and rank.

His father had often assured him he could leave him nothing, so the son
was accustomed to look forward to this situation. Therefore, when he
realized it, he was neither surprised nor revolted by the improvident
egotism of which he was the victim. His reverence for his father
continued unabated, and he did not read with the less respect or
confidence the singular missive which figures at the beginning of this
story. The moral theories which this letter advanced were not new to
him. They were a part of the very atmosphere around him; he had often
revolved them in his feverish brain; yet, never before had they appeared
to him in the condensed form of a dogma, with the clear precision of a
practical code; nor as now, with the authorization of such a voice and
of such an example.

One incident gave powerful aid in confirming the impression of these
last pages on his mind. Eight days after his father's death, he was
reclining on the lounge in his smoking-room, his face dark as night and
as his thoughts, when a servant entered and handed him a card. He took
it listlessly, and read "Lescande, architect." Two red spots rose to his
pale cheeks--"I do not see any one," he said.

"So I told this gentleman," replied the servant, "but he insists i