Du Croisier wrote to Victurnien, telling him that the Kellers had been
instructed to advance no more money; and that letter was timed to arrive
just as the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was in the utmost perplexity, and
the Comte d'Esgrignon consumed by the sense of poverty as dreadful as
it was cunningly hidden. The wretched young man was exerting all his
ingenuity to seem as if he were wealthy!

Now in the letter which informed the victim that in future the Kellers
would make no further advances without security, there was a tolerably
wide space left between the forms of an exaggerated respect and the
signature. It was quite easy to tear off the best part of the letter
and convert it into a bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical
missive had been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of the
sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing in the lowest
depths of despair. After two years of the most prosperous, sensual,
thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found himself face to face with the
most inexorable poverty; it was an absolute impossibility to procure
money. There had been some throes of crisis before the journey came to
an end. With the Duchess' help he had managed to extort various sums
from bankers; but it had been with the greatest difficulty, and,
moreover, those very amounts were about to start up again before him as
overdue bills of exchange in all their rigor, with a stern summons to
pay from the Bank of France and the commercial court. All through the
enjoyments of those last weeks the unhappy boy had felt the point of the
Commander's sword; at every supper-party he heard, like Don Juan,
the heavy tread of the statue outside upon the stairs. He felt an
unaccountable creeping of the flesh, a warning that the sirocco of debt
is nigh at hand. He reckoned on chance. For five years he had never
turned up a blank in the lottery, his purse had always been replenished.
After Chesnel had come du Croisier (he told himself), after du Croisier
surely another gold mine would pour out its wealth. And besides, he
was winning great sums at play; his luck at play had saved him several
unpleasant steps already; and often a wild hope sent him to the Salon
des Etrangers only to lose his winnings afterwards at whist at the club.
His life for the past two months had been like the immortal finale of
Mozart's Don Giovanni; and of a truth, if a young man has come to such
a plight as Victurnien's, that fina