ud: "One, two, three, four--" At the fifth he
rose.

"There's no hope now. There comes the other," he said, alluding to the
Parisian superstition to the effect that a visit from the sovereign was
always fatal to the dying. The servants hurried from all directions,
threw the folding-doors wide open and formed a lane, while the usher,
his hat _en bataille_ announced with a resounding blow of his pike upon
the floor the passage of two august personages, of whom Jansoulet caught
only a confused glimpse behind the servants, but whom he saw through a
long vista of open doors ascending the grand staircase, preceded by a
valet carrying a candelabrum. The woman was erect and haughty, enveloped
in her black Spanish mantilla; the man clung to the stair-rail, walked
more slowly and as if fatigued, the collar of his light top-coat
standing up from a back slightly bent, which was shaken by convulsive
sobs.

"Let us be off, Nabob. Nothing more to be done here," said the old beau,
taking Jansoulet by the arm and leading him out. He stopped on the
threshold, raised his hand, and waved a little salute with the tips of
his gloves toward him who lay dying above. "_Bojou_, dea' boy." The tone
and gesture were worldly, irreproachable; but the voice trembled a
little.

The club on Rue Royale, renowned for its card-playing, had rarely seen
so terrible a game as it saw that night. It began at eleven o'clock and
was still in progress at five in the morning. Enormous sums lay on the
green cloth, changed hands and direction, heaped up, scattered,
reunited; fortunes were swallowed up in that colossal game, and at its
close the Nabob, who had started it to forget his fears in the caprices
of luck, after extraordinary alternations, somersaults of fortune
calculated to make a neophyte's hair turn white, withdrew with winnings
of five hundred thousand francs. They said five millions on the
boulevard the next day, and every one cried shame, especially the
_Messager_, which gave up three-quarters of its space to an article
against certain adventurers who are tolerated in clubs, and who cause
the ruin of the most respectable families.

Alas! Jansoulet's winnings hardly represented the amount of the first
Schwalbach notes.

During that insane game, although Mora was its involuntary cause, and,
as it were, its soul, his name was not once mentioned. Neither
Cardailhac nor Jenkins appeared. Monpavon had taken to his bed, more
affected than he chose to