s the administrative, and
yet another the business world. I myself keep an eye on eldest
sons, artists, people in the great world, and gamblers--on the most
sensational side of Paris. Every one who comes to us lets us into his
neighbor's secrets. Thwarted passion and mortified vanity are great
babblers. Vice and disappointment and vindictiveness are the best of
all detectives. My colleagues, like myself, have enjoyed all things, are
sated with all things, and have reached the point when power and money
are loved for their own sake.

"'Here,' he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, 'here the most
high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and draws swords for a
syllable elsewhere will entreat with clasped hands. There is no city
merchant so proud, no woman so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so bold
a spirit, but that they entreat me here, one and all, with tears of rage
or anguish in their eyes. Here they kneel--the famous artist, and the
man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in short'
(he lifted his hand to his forehead), 'all the inheritances and all the
concerns of all Paris are weighed in the balance. Are you still of the
opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask which so often
has amazed you by its impassiveness?' he asked, stretching out that
livid face which reeked of money.

"I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old man
had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a strange
visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold personified. I
shrank, shuddering, from life and my kind.

"'Is it really so?' I thought; 'must everything be resolved into gold?'

"I remember that it was long before I slept that night. I saw heaps
of gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I
confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another quiet,
innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a life of
toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of slumber,
Fanny's sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I thought of
nothing else."

"Will you take a glass of _eau sucree_?" asked the Vicomtesse,
interrupting Derville.

"I should be glad of it."

"But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns," said Mme.
de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.

"Sardanapalus!" cried Derville, flinging out his favorite invocation.
"Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in