ge of consequence
who often draws his pay from the police; he was genuine _hidalgo_, a
grandee of Spain. Perhaps one of his ancestors figured in the _Cid_, in
_Ruy Blas_ or some other of the heroic pieces in the repertory of the
Comedie Francaise.

The count entered the salons of the club with head erect and a proud
gait, greeting his friends with a barely discernible smile, a mixture of
hauteur and light-heartedness.

He was approaching his fortieth year, but he was still the _beau_
Sagreda, as he had long been nicknamed by the noctambulous women of
Maxim's and the early-rising Amazons of the Bois. A few gray hairs at
his temples and a triangle of faint wrinkles at the corner of his brows,
betrayed the effects of an existence that had been lived at too rapid a
pace, with the vital machinery running at full speed. But his eyes were
still youthful, intense and melancholy; eyes that caused him to be
called "the Moor" by his men and women friends. The Viscount de la
Tresminiere, crowned by the Academy as the author of a study on one of
his ancestors who had been a companion of Conde, and highly appreciated
by the antique dealers on the left bank of the Seine, who sold him all
the bad canvases they had in store, called him _Velazquez_, satisfied
that the swarthy, somewhat olive complexion of the count, his black,
heavy mustache and his grave eyes, gave him the right to display his
thorough acquaintance with Spanish art.

All the members of the club spoke of Sagreda's ruin with discreet
compassion. The poor count! Not to fall heir to some new legacy. Not to
meet some American millionairess who would be smitten with him and his
titles!... They must do something to save him.

And he walked amid this mute and smiling pity without being at all aware
of it, encased in his pride, receiving as admiration that which was
really compassionate sympathy, forced to have recourse to painful
simulations in order to surround himself with as much luxury as before,
thinking that he was deceiving others and deceiving only himself.

Sagreda cherished no illusions as to the future. All the relatives that
might come to his rescue with a timely legacy had done so many years
before, upon making their exit from the world's stage. None that might
recall his name was left beyond the mountains. In Spain he had only some
distant relatives, personages of the nobility united to him more by
historic bonds than by ties of blood. They addressed him fami