ve everything and to lose everything. What an upheaval!

In the first silence of that awful moment, while he listened to the
muffled music of the duchess's ball at the other end of the palace, the
things that still bound that man to life--power, honors, wealth, all the
magnificence that surrounded him--must have seemed to him to be already
far away in an irrevocable past. It required courage of a very
exceptional temper to resist such a blow without the slightest outburst
of self-love. No one was present save the friend, the physician, the
servant, three intimate acquaintances, who were familiar with all his
secrets; the lights being turned low left the bed in shadow, and the
dying man could have turned his face to the wall and given vent to his
emotion unseen. But no. Not a second of weakness, of fruitless
demonstrations. Without breaking a branch of the chestnut trees in the
garden, without withering a flower in the great hall of the palace,
Death, muffling his footsteps in the heavy carpets, had opened that
great man's door and motioned to him: "Come!" And he replied, simply, "I
am ready." A fit exit for a man of the world, unforeseen, swift and
noiseless.

A man of the world! Mora was nothing else. Passing smoothly through
life, arrayed in mask and gloves and breastplate, the breastplate of
white satin worn by fencing-masters on days of great exhibitions,
keeping his fighting costume ever clean and spotless, sacrificing
everything to that irreproachable exterior which served him instead of a
coat of mail, he had metamorphosed himself into a statesman, passing
from the salon to a vaster stage, and made in truth a statesman of the
first order simply by virtue of his qualities as a leader of society,
the art of listening and smiling, knowledge of men, scepticism and
_sang-froid_. That _sang-froid_ did not leave him at the supreme moment.

With his eyes upon the brief, limited time which still remained to him,
for his dark-browed visitor was in haste and he could feel on his face
the wind from the door which he had not closed, he thought of nothing
but making good use of that time and fulfilling all the obligations of
an end like his own, which should leave no devotion unrewarded, should
compromise no friend. He made a list of the few persons whom he wished
to see and to whom messengers were sent at once; then he asked for his
chief clerk, and when Jenkins suggested that he was overtiring himself,
"Will you promise me