ust suffer for all!"

And his sincerity could hardly be called in question; for he was
then in one of those moments of decisive crisis in which the truth
forces itself out in spite of all calculation.

"He must have accomplices then," murmured Maxence.

Although he had spoken very low, Mme. Favoral overheard him. To
defend her husband, she found a remnant of energy, and, straightening
herself on her seat,

"Ah! do not doubt it," she stammered out. "Of his own inspiration,
Vincent could never have committed an evil act. He has been
circumvented, led away, duped!"

"Very well; but by whom?"

"By Costeclar," affirmed Mlle. Gilberte.

"By the Messrs. Jottras, the bankers," said Mme. Favoral, "and also
by M. Saint Pavin, the editor of 'the Financial Pilot.'"

"By all of them, evidently," interrupted Maxence, "even by his
manager, M. de Thaller."

When a man is at the bottom of a precipice, what is the use of
finding out how he has got there,--whether by stumbling over a
stone, or slipping on a tuft of grass! And yet it is always our
foremost thought. It was with an eager obstinacy that Mme. Favoral
and her children ascended the course of their existence, seeking in
the past the incidents and the merest words which might throw some
light upon their disaster; for it was quite manifest that it was
not in one day and at the same time that twelve millions had been
subtracted from the Mutual Credit. This enormous deficit must have
been, as usual, made gradually, with infinite caution at first,
whilst there was a desire, and some hope, to make it good again,
then with mad recklessness towards the end when the catastrophe had
become inevitable.

"Alas!" murmured Mme. Favoral, "why did not Vincent listen to my
presentiments on that ever fatal day when he brought M. de Thaller,
M. Jottras, and M. Saint Pavin to dine here? They promised him a
fortune."

Maxence and Mlle. Gilberte were too young at the time of that dinner
to have preserved any remembrance of it; but they remembered many
other circumstances, which, at the time they had taken place, had
not struck them. They understood now the temper of their father,
his perpetual irritation, and the spasms of his humor. When his
friends were heaping insults upon him, he had exclaimed,

"Be it so! let them arrest me; and to-night, for the first time in
many years, I shall sleep in peace."

There were years, then, that he lived, as it were upon burning coals,
tr