relation to each other until the house is out of
difficulty and I can--But what I shall do then concerns me alone. This is
what I wanted to say to you, Georges. You must give your attention to the
factory diligently; you must show yourself, make it felt that you are
master now, and I believe there will turn out to be, among all our
misfortunes, some that can be retrieved."

During the silence that followed, they heard the sound of wheels in the
garden, and two great furniture vans stopped at the door.

"I beg your pardon," said Risler, "but I must leave you a moment. Those
are the vans from the public auction rooms; they have come to take away
my furniture from upstairs."

"What! you are going to sell your furniture too?" asked Madame Fromont.

"Certainly--to the last piece. I am simply giving it back to the firm. It
belongs to it."

"But that is impossible," said Georges. "I can not allow that."

Risler turned upon him indignantly.

"What's that? What is it that you can't allow?"

Claire checked him with an imploring gesture.

"True--true!" he muttered; and he hurried from the room to escape the
sudden temptation to give vent to all that was in his heart.

The second floor was deserted. The servants, who had been paid and
dismissed in the morning, had abandoned the apartments to the disorder of
the day following a ball; and they wore the aspect peculiar to places
where a drama has been enacted, and which are left in suspense, as it
were, between the events that have happened and those that are still to
happen. The open doors, the rugs lying in heaps in the corners, the
salvers laden with glasses, the preparations for the supper, the table
still set and untouched, the dust from the dancing on all the furniture,
its odor mingled with the fumes of punch, of withered flowers, of
rice-powder--all these details attracted Risler's notice as he entered.

In the disordered salon the piano was open, the bacchanal from 'Orphee
aux Enfers' on the music-shelf, and the gaudy hangings surrounding that
scene of desolation, the chairs overturned, as if in fear, reminded one
of the saloon of a wrecked packet-boat, of one of those ghostly nights of
watching when one is suddenly informed, in the midst of a fete at sea,
that the ship has sprung a leak, that she is taking in water in every
part.

The men began to remove the furniture. Risler watched them at work with
an indifferent air, as if he were in a stranger's house. That