ll me not about heroes for the future--tell me of
_zeroes_." And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.

The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
lookers-on began to stare at him.

There were twelve thousand pounds upon the table. Suffice it to say,
that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had
been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a
prince for half a year!

Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had
a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He
repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
_restaurateur's_ plate. "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an
action like this of a man who has a property like mine!" So he went
back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable. "My
friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most sacred:
I have forgotten my family and my religion. Here is thy money. In the
name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have wrongfully sold
thee!"

But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I will never sell it at
all."

"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of
five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is
the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I _stole_ that
plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer
the thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did
wrong. I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I _will_ do right!"

The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
plate."

"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
"sign me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote
according to Gambouge's dictation: "Received, for thirteen ounces of
plate, twenty pounds."

"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou
art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me f