. I am looking on at a
terrible disaster, the pillage of a Summer Palace, which I am powerless
to check; but my heart rises in revolt at all that I see. I exchange
grasps of the hand which dishonor me. I am your friend, and I seem to
be their confederate. And who knows whether, by living on in such an
atmosphere, I might not become so?"

This letter, which he read slowly, thoroughly, even to the spaces
between the words and the lines, made such a keen impression on the
Nabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to his young
secretary. Paul occupied a study at the end of the suite of salons,
where he slept on a couch, a provisional arrangement which he had never
cared to change. The whole house was still asleep. As he walked through
the long line of great salons, which were not used for evening
receptions, so that the curtains were always open and at that moment
admitted the uncertain light of a Parisian dawn, the Nabob paused,
impressed by the melancholy aspect that his magnificent surroundings
presented. In the heavy odor of tobacco and various liquors that filled
the rooms, the furniture, the wainscotings, the decorations seemed
faded yet still new. Stains on the crumpled satin, ashes soiling the
beautiful marbles, marks of boots on the carpet reminded him of a huge
first-class railway carriage, bearing the marks of the indolence,
impatience and ennui of a long journey, with the destructive contempt
of the public for a luxury for which it has paid. Amid that stage
scenery, all in position and still warm from the ghastly comedy that
was played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold,
pale mirrors, rose before him, at once ominous and comical, ill-at-ease
in his fashionable clothes, with bloated cheeks and face inflamed and
dirty.

What an inevitable and disenchanting morrow to the insane life he was
leading!

He lost himself for a moment in gloomy thoughts; then, with the
vigorous shrug of the shoulders which was so familiar in him, that
packman's gesture with which he threw off any too painful
preoccupation, he resumed the burden which every man carries with him,
and which causes the back to bend more or less, according to his
courage or his strength, and entered de Gery's room, where he found him
already dressed and standing in front of his open desk, arranging
papers.

"First of all, my boy," said Jansoulet, closing the door softly on
their interview, "answer me this question frankly