the two young men, secretly fanned the flame. The duel came
off one Saturday morning, in the woods near Vincennes. They fought with
small-swords; and, after little more than a minute, M. Planix received
a stab in his breast, fell, and was dead in an instant. He was not yet
twenty-seven years old.

"Sarah's joy was almost delirious. Accomplished actress as she was, she
could hardly manage to shed a few tears for the benefit of the public,
when the body, still warm, was brought to the house. And still she had
once loved the man, whom she had now assassinated.

"Even as she knelt by the bedside, hiding her face in her handkerchief,
she was thinking only of the testament, lying safe and snug, as she
knew, in one of the drawers of that bureau, enclosed in a large official
envelope with a huge red wax seal.

"It was opened and read the same day by the justice of the peace, who
had been sent for to put the seals on the deceased man's property. And
then Sarah began to cry in good earnest. Her tears were tears of rage.
For seized by a kind of remorse, and at a moment when Sarah's absence
had rendered him very angry, M. Planix had added two lines as a codicil.

"He still said, 'I appoint Miss Ernestine Bergot my residuary legatee';
but he had written underneath, 'on condition that she shall pay to each
of my sisters the sum of a hundred and fifty thousand francs.' This was
more than three-fourths of his whole fortune.

"When she arrived, therefore, that night, at Brevan's rooms, her first
words were,--

"'We have been robbed! Planix was a wretch! We won't have a hundred
thousand francs left.'

"Maxime, however, recovered his equanimity pretty soon; for the sum
appeared to him quite large enough to pay for a crime in which they had
run no risk, and he was quite as willing as before to marry Sarah; but
she refused to listen to him, saying that a hundred thousand francs were
barely enough for a year's income, and that they must wait. It was then
that M. de Brevan became a gambler. The wretch actually believed in
the cards; he believed that fortunes could be made by playing. He had
systems of his own which could not fail, and which he was bent upon
trying.

"He proposed to Sarah to risk the hundred thousand francs, promising
to make a million out of them; and she yielded, tempted by the very
boldness of his proposition.

"They resolved they would not stop playing till they had won a million,
or lost everything. And so they