e
awoke his gaiety had left him. He had the fatal custom of reflecting;
his reflections saddened him; he was revenged, but what then? He thought
for a long while of Mlle. Moriaz; he gazed with melancholy eye at his
two hands, which had allowed her and good fortune to elude their grasp.

He recited in a low voice some German verses, signifying:

"I have resolved to bury my songs and my dreams; bring me a large
coffin. Why is this coffin so heavy? Because in it with my dreams I have
laid away my love and my sorrows."

When he had recited these verses Samuel felt sadder than before, and he
cursed the poets. "They did me great harm," he said, bitterly. "Without
them I had spent days interwoven with gold and silk. My future was
secure: it was they who gave me a distaste for my position. I believed
in them; I was the dupe of their hollow declamation; they taught me
thoughtless contempt, and they gave me the sickly ambition to play the
silly part of a man of fine sentiments. I despised the mud. Where am I
now?"

He had formed the project of going to Holland and of embarking thence
for America. What would he do in the United States? He did not know yet.
He passed in review all the professions that at all suited him; they
all required an outlay for first expenses. Thanks to God and to M.
Guldenthal, whose loan was in the greatest danger, he was not destitute
of all supplies. But a week previous he had held into the flames and
burned twenty-five one-thousand-franc bills of the Bank of France. He
felt some remorse for the act; he could not help thinking that a revenge
that cost twenty-five thousand francs was an article of luxury of which
poor devils should deprive themselves. In thinking over this adventure,
it seemed to him that it was another than himself who had burned those
bills, or at least that he had mechanically executed this _auto-da-fe_
through a sort of thoughtless impulse, like a puppet moved by an
invisible string. Suddenly the phantom with whom he had had frequent
conversations appeared, and there was a sneer on its lips. Samuel
addressed it once more--this was to be the last time; he said:

"Imbecile! You are my evil genius. It was you who caused me to commit
this extravagance. You yourself lighted the candle, you put the bills
into my hands, you guided my arm, extended it, held it above the fatal
flame. This act of supreme heroism was your work; it is not I, it is
you, who paid so dearly for the pleasure of