my dear friend, you are on the ground, and you will be very
soon officially recognized as Mlle. Mercadet's intended! Steer your
bark well, for the father is a deep one.

De la Brive
That is what frightens me, for difficulties loom ahead.

Mericourt
I do not believe so; Mercadet is a speculator, rich to-day, to-morrow
possibly a beggar. With the little I know of his affairs from his
wife, I am led to believe that he is enchanted with the prospect of
depositing a part of his fortune in the name of his daughter, and of
obtaining a son-in-law capable of assisting him in carrying out his
financial schemes.

De la Brive
That is a good idea, and suits me exactly; but suppose he wishes to
find out too much about me.

Mericourt
I have given M. Mercadet an excellent account of you.

De la Brive
I have fallen upon my feet truly.

Mericourt
But you are not going to lose the dandy's self-possession? I quite
understand that your position is risky. A man would not marry,
excepting from utter despair. Marriage is suicide for the man of the
world. (In a low voice) Come, tell me--can you hold out much longer?

De la Brive
If I had not two names, one for the bailiffs and one for the
fashionable world, I should be banished from the Boulevard. Woman and
I, as you know, have wrought each the ruin of the other, and, as
fashion now goes, to find a rich Englishwoman, an amiable dowager, an
amorous gold mine, would be as impossible as to find an extinct
animal.

Mericourt
What of the gaming table?

De la Brive
Oh! Gambling is an unreliable resource excepting for certain crooks,
and I am not such a fool as to run the risk of disgrace for the sake
of winnings which always have their limit. Publicity, my dear friend,
has been the abolition of all those shady careers in which fortune
once was to be found. So, that for a hundred thousand francs of
accepted bills, the usurer gives me but ten thousand. Pierquin sent me
to one of his agents, a sort of sub-Pierquin, a little old man called
Violette, who said to my broker that he could not give me money on
such paper at any rate! Meanwhile my tailor has refused to bank upon
my prospects. My horse is living on credit; as to my tiger, the little
wretch who wears such fine clothes, I do now know how he lives, or
where he feeds. I dare not peer into the mystery. Now, as we are not
so advanced in civilization as the Jews, who canceled all debts every
half-century, a man must pay by the sacri