le is enough to make him shudder.
Can anything better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime
rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life wholly
give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate
effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil
luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific
finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly
spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made
in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the
drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone.
He saw visions of himself--a friendless, solitary outcast, reading the
words carved on the stone, the last words on the last page of the book
that had held him spellbound--THE END!

Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Already he saw the
cold, ironical eyes which his associates would turn upon him, and their
amusement over his downfall. Some of them he knew were playing high on
that gambling-table kept open all day long at the Bourse, or in private
houses at the clubs, and anywhere and everywhere in Paris; but not one
of these men could spare a banknote to save an intimate. There was no
help for it--Chesnel must be ruined. He had devoured Chesnel's living.

He sat with the Duchess in their box at the Italiens, the whole house
envying them their happiness, and while he smiled at her, all the Furies
were tearing at his heart. Indeed, to give some idea of the depths of
doubt, despair, and incredulity in which the boy was groveling; he who
so clung to life--the life which the angel had made so fair--who so
loved it, that he would have stooped to baseness merely to live; he, the
pleasure-loving scapegrace, the degenerate d'Esgrignon, had even taken
out his pistols, had gone so far as to think of suicide. He who would
never have brooked the appearance of an insult was abusing himself in
language which no man is likely to hear except from himself.

He left du Croisier's letter lying open on the bed. Josephin had brought
it in at nine o'clock. Victurnien's furniture had been seized, but
he slept none the less. After he came back from the Opera, he and the
Duchess had gone to a voluptuous retreat, where they often spent a few
hours together after the most brilliant court balls and evening parties
and gaieties. Appearances were very cleverly saved. Their love-nes