ught passed through his mind, Georges had a mad longing to
go up, to wake Risler, to tell him everything and destroy himself with
her. Really that deluded husband was too idiotic! Why did he not watch
her more closely? She was pretty enough, yes, and vicious enough, too,
for every precaution to be taken with her.

And it was while he was struggling amid such cruel and unfruitful
reflections as these that the devil of anxiety whispered in his ear:

"The notes! the notes!"

The miserable wretch! In his wrath he had entirely forgotten them. And
yet he had long watched the approach of that terrible last day of
January. How many times, between two assignations, when his mind, free
for a moment from thoughts of Sidonie, recurred to his business, to the
realities of life-how many times had he said to himself, "That day will
be the end of everything!" But, as with all those who live in the
delirium of intoxication, his cowardice convinced him that it was too
late to mend matters, and he returned more quickly and more determinedly
to his evil courses, in order to forget, to divert his thoughts.

But that was no longer possible. He saw the impending disaster clearly,
in its full meaning; and Sigismond Planus's wrinkled, solemn face rose
before him with its sharply cut features, whose absence of expression
softened their harshness, and his light German-Swiss eyes, which had
haunted him for many weeks with their impassive stare.

Well, no, he had not the hundred thousand francs, nor did he know where
to get them.

The crisis which, a few hours before, seemed to him a chaos, an eddying
whirl in which he could see nothing distinctly and whose very confusion
was a source of hope, appeared to him at that moment with appalling
distinctness. An empty cash-box, closed doors, notes protested, ruin, are
the phantoms he saw whichever way he turned. And when, on top of all the
rest, came the thought of Sidonie's treachery, the wretched, desperate
man, finding nothing to cling to in that shipwreck, suddenly uttered a
sob, a cry of agony, as if appealing for help to some higher power.

"Georges, Georges, it is I. What is the matter?"

His wife stood before him, his wife who now waited for him every night,
watching anxiously for his return from the club, for she still believed
that he passed his evenings there. That night she had heard him walking
very late in his room. At last her child fell asleep, and Claire, hearing
the father sob, r