one convulsed in
the death agony, and cried out in a terrible voice--

"'See here! What you have won from me is my wife's corpse!'

"The Colonel hurried to the bedside in terror. There was no trace of
life. Angela was dead.

"The Colonel raised his clenched hands to heaven, and rushed away with
a hollow cry. He was no more seen."

It was thus that the stranger finished his narrative, and having done
so, he went quickly away, before the Baron, much moved by it, was able
to utter any word.

A day or two afterwards the stranger was found insensible in his room,
stricken by apoplexy. He was speechless till his death, which happened
in a few hours. His papers showed that, though he was known by the name
of Baudasson, he really was none other than the unfortunate Chevalier
Menars.

The Baron recognized the warning of Heaven which had brought the
Chevalier Menars to him just when he was nearing the abyss, and he took
a solemn vow that he would resist all the temptations of the deceptive
Gambler's Fortune. Hitherto he has kept his vow.

"Would one not suppose," said Lothair, when Theodore had ended, "that
you were a man who knew all about gambling, and were great at all those
games yourself, though perhaps your conscience might now and then give
you a slap in the face? and yet I know very well that you never touch a
card."

"That is quite the case," said Theodore. "And yet I derived much
assistance, in my story, from a strange experience which I had myself
once."

"It would be the best _finale_ to your tale," said Ottmar, "to tell us
this said experience of yours."

"You know," said Theodore, "that when I was finishing my education I
lived for some time with an old uncle of mine in G----. There was a
certain friend of this uncle's who, though our ages were very
different, took a great pleasure in my society, chiefly, perhaps,
because at that time I was always filled with a brilliant vein of
humour, sometimes amounting to the mischievous. This gentleman was, I
can assure you, one of the most extraordinary characters I ever came
across. Mean in all the relationships of life, ill-tempered, grumbling,
sulky, with a great tendency to miserliness, he had the utmost
appreciation for everything in the shape of fun and amusement. To use a
French expression, he was in the highest degree _amusable_, but not in
the least _amusant_. At the same time he was excessively vain, and one
form of his vanity was that he was always