dum of which I speak," said Paul de Gery, at
the end of his letter, "in the top drawer of my desk along with sundry
receipts. I have not put them in your room, because I mistrust Noel
like the rest. When I go away to-night I will give you the key. For I
am going away, my dear benefactor and friend, I am going away full of
gratitude for the good you have done me, and heartbroken that your blind
confidence has prevented me from repaying you even in part. As things
are now, my conscience as an honest man will not let me stay any longer
useless at my post. I am looking on at a disaster, at the sack of a
palace, which I can do nothing to prevent. My heart burns at all I see.
I give handshakes which shame me. I am your friend, and I seem their
accomplice. And who knows that if I went on living in such an atmosphere
I might not become one?"

This letter, which he read slowly and carefully, even between the lines
and through the words, made so great an impression on the Nabob that,
instead of going to bed, he went at once to find his young secretary. De
Gery had a study at the end of the row of public rooms where he slept on
a sofa. It had been a provisional arrangement, but he had preferred not
to change it.

The house was still asleep. As he was crossing the lofty rooms, filled
with the vague light of a Parisian dawn (those blinds were never
lowered, as no evening receptions were held there), the Nabob stopped,
struck by the look of sad defilement his luxury wore. In the heavy
odour of tobacco and various liqueurs which hung over everything, the
furniture, the ceilings, the woodwork could be seen, already faded and
still new. Spots on the crumpled satins, ashes staining the beautiful
marbles, dirty footmarks on the carpets. It reminded one of a huge
first-class railway carriage incrusted with all the laziness, the
impatience, the boredom of a long journey, and all the wasteful,
spoiling disdain of the public for a luxury for which it has paid.
In the middle of this set scene, still warm from the atrocious comedy
played there every day, his own image, reflected in twenty cold and
staring looking-glasses, stood out before him, forbidding yet comical,
in absolute contrast to his elegant clothes, his eyes swollen, his face
bloated and inflamed.

What an obvious and disenchanting to-morrow to the mad life he was
leading!

He lost himself for a moment in dreary thought; then he gave his
shoulders a vigorous shake, a movement f