izes so much to be envied? You have almost done the work of
an executioner."

"After sharing and stimulating my curiosity, why are you now lecturing
me on morality?"

"You have made me reflect," she answered.

"So, then, peace to villains, war to the sorrowful, and let's deify
gold! However, we will drop the subject," I added, laughing. "Do you see
that young girl who is just entering the salon?"

"Yes, what of her?"

"I met her, three days ago, at the ball of the Neapolitan ambassador,
and I am passionately in love with her. For pity's sake tell me her
name. No one was able--"

"That is Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer."

I grew dizzy.

"Her step-mother," continued my neighbor, "has lately taken her from a
convent, where she was finishing, rather late in the day, her education.
For a long time her father refused to recognize her. She comes here for
the first time. She is very beautiful and very rich."

These words were accompanied by a sardonic smile.

At this moment we heard violent, but smothered outcries; they seemed to
come from a neighboring apartment and to be echoed faintly back through
the garden.

"Isn't that the voice of Monsieur Taillefer?" I said.

We gave our full attention to the noise; a frightful moaning reached our
ears. The wife of the banker came hurriedly towards us and closed the
window.

"Let us avoid a scene," she said. "If Mademoiselle Taillefer hears her
father, she might be thrown into hysterics."

The banker now re-entered the salon, looked round for Victorine, and
said a few words in her ear. Instantly the young girl uttered a cry, ran
to the door, and disappeared. This event produced a great sensation. The
card-players paused. Every one questioned his neighbor. The murmur of
voices swelled, and groups gathered.

"Can Monsieur Taillefer be--" I began.

"--dead?" said my sarcastic neighbor. "You would wear the gayest
mourning, I fancy!"

"But what has happened to him?"

"The poor dear man," said the mistress of the house, "is subject to
attacks of a disease the name of which I never can remember, though
Monsieur Brousson has often told it to me; and he has just been seized
with one."

"What is the nature of the disease?" asked an examining-judge.

"Oh, it is something terrible, monsieur," she replied. "The doctors know
no remedy. It causes the most dreadful suffering. One day, while the
unfortunate man was staying at my country-house, he had an attack, and
I was ob