one by one;
and soon the servant closed the door on the last of them.

Then Mme. Favoral, Maxence, and Mlle. Gilberte surrounded M.
Chapelain, and, pressing his hands,

"How thankful we feel, sir, for the service you have just
rendered us!"

But the old lawyer seemed in no wise proud of his victory.

"Do not thank me," he said. "I have only done my duty,--what any
honest man would have done in my place."

And yet, under the appearance of impassible coldness, which he owed
to the long practice of a profession which leaves no illusions, he
evidently felt a real emotion.

"It is you whom I pity," he added, "and with all my soul,--you,
madame, you, my dear Gilberte, and you, too, Maxence. Never had I
so well understood to what degree is guilty the head of a family
who leaves his wife and children exposed to the consequences of his
crimes."

He stopped. The servant was trying her best to put the dining-room
in some sort of order wheeling the table to the centre of the room,
and lifting up the chairs from the floor.

"What pillage!" she grumbled. "Neighbors too,--people from whom
we bought our things! But they were worse than savages; impossible
to do any thing with them."

"Don't trouble yourself, my good girl," said M. Chapelain: "they
won't come back any more!"

Mme. Favoral looked as if she wished to drop on her knees before
the old lawyer.

"How, very kind you are!" she murmured: "you are not too angry with
my poor Vincent!"

With the look of a man who has made up his mind to make the best of
a disaster that he cannot help, M. Chapelain shrugged his shoulders.

"I am angry with no one but myself," he uttered in a bluff tone.
"An old bird like me should not have allowed himself to be caught
in a pigeon-trap. I am inexcusable. But we want to get rich. It's
slow work getting rich by working, and it's so much easier to get
the money already made out of our neighbor's pockets! I have been
unable to resist the temptation myself. It's my own fault; and I
should say it was a good lesson, if it did not cost so dear."

XXIV

So much philosophy could hardly have been expected of him.

"All my father's friends are not as indulgent as you are," said
Maxence,--"M. Desclavettes, for instance."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes, last night, about twelve o'clock. He came to ask us to get
father to pay him back, if we should ever see him again."

"That might be an idea!"

Mlle. Gilberte started.

"