e fashionable plunder with which
his arms were filled--feminine trinkets, trivial aids to coquetry,
stamped papers.

Then he turned to his wife:

"Take off your jewels! Come, be quick."

She complied slowly, opened reluctantly the clasps of bracelets and
buckles, and above all the superb fastening of her diamond necklace on
which the initial of her name-a gleaming S-resembled a sleeping serpent,
imprisoned in a circle of gold. Risler, thinking that she was too slow,
ruthlessly broke, the fragile fastenings. Luxury shrieked beneath his
fingers, as if it were being whipped.

"Now it is my turn," he said; "I too must give up everything. Here is my
portfolio. What else have I? What else have I?"

He searched his pockets feverishly.

"Ah! my watch. With the chain it will bring four-thousand francs. My
rings, my wedding-ring. Everything goes into the cash-box, everything.
We have a hundred thousand francs to pay this morning. As soon as it is
daylight we must go to work, sell out and pay our debts. I know some one
who wants the house at Asnieres. That can be settled at once."

He alone spoke and acted. Sigismond and Madame Georges watched him
without speaking. As for Sidonie, she seemed unconscious, lifeless.
The cold air blowing from the garden through the little door, which
was opened at the time of Risler's swoon, made her shiver, and she
mechanically drew the folds of her scarf around her shoulders, her eyes
fixed on vacancy, her thoughts wandering. Did she not hear the violins
of her ball, which reached their ears in the intervals of silence, like
bursts of savage irony, with the heavy thud of the dancers shaking the
floors? An iron hand, falling upon her, aroused her abruptly from her
torpor. Risler had taken her by the arm, and, leading her before his
partner's wife, he said:

"Down on your knees!"

Madame Fromont drew back, remonstrating:

"No, no, Risler, not that."

"It must be," said the implacable Risler. "Restitution, reparation!
Down on your knees then, wretched woman!" And with irresistible force he
threw Sidonie at Claire's feet; then, still holding her arm;

"You will repeat after me, word for word, what I say: Madame--"

Sidonie, half dead with fear, repeated faintly: "Madame--"

"A whole lifetime of humility and submission--"

"A whole lifetime of humil--No, I can not!" she exclaimed, springing to
her feet with the agility of a deer; and, wresting herself from Risler's
grasp, through that