able 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 finale is enough to make him shudder. Can
anything better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime
rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life wholly
give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate
effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil
luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The
terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter,
its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's
last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic
struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this
infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself--a friendless,
solitary outcast, reading the words carved on the stone, the last
words on the last page of the book that had held him spellbound--THE
END!

Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Already he saw the
cold, ironical eyes which his associates would turn upon him, and
their amusement over his downfall. Some of them he knew