Fortunat's drawing-room being used but seldom, was really as frigid
as an iceberg; and to make matters still worse, M. de Valorsay was in
evening dress, with only a light overcoat. The servant hesitated for an
instant, thinking this visitor difficult to please, and inclined to make
himself very much at home, still she obeyed.

"I think I ought to go," muttered the marquis. "I really think I
ought to go." And yet he remained. Necessity, it should be remembered,
effectually quiets the revolts of pride.

Left an orphan in his early childhood, placed in possession of an
immense fortune at the age of twenty-three, M. de Valorsay had entered
life like a famished man enters a dining-room. His name entitled him to
a high position in the social world; and he installed himself at table
without asking how much the banquet might cost him. It cost him dear,
as he discovered at the end of the first year, on noting that his
disbursements had considerably exceeded his large income. It was very
evident that if he went on in this way, each twelvemonth would deepen
an abyss where in the one hundred and sixty thousand francs a year, left
him by his father, would finally be swallowed up. But he had plenty of
time to reflect upon this unpleasant possibility ere it could come to
pass! And, besides, he found his present life so delightful, and he
obtained so much gratification for his money, that he was unwilling to
make any change. He possessed several fine estates, and he found plenty
of men who were only too glad to lend him money on such excellent
security. He borrowed timidly at first, but more boldly when he
discovered what a mere trifle a mortgage is. Moreover, his wants
increased in proportion to his vanity. Occupying a certain position in
the opinion of his acquaintances, he did not wish to descend from the
heights to which they had exalted him; and the very fact that he had
been foolishly extravagant one year made it necessary for him to be
guilty of similar folly during the succeeding twelvemonth. He failed to
pay his creditors the interest that was due on his loans. They did not
ask him for it; and perhaps he forgot that it was slowly but surely
accumulating, and that at the end of a certain number of years the
amount of his indebtedness would be doubled. He never thought what the
end would be. He became absolutely ignorant of the condition of his
affairs, and really arrived at the conclusion that his resources were
inexhaustible.