"What creditors?" asked Jean Jacques.

"All the creditors," responded the other, and he produced a receipt for
Jean Jacques to sign. "A formal statement will be sent you, and if there
is any more due to you, it will be added then. But now--well, there it
is, the creditors think there is no reason for you to wait."

Jean Jacques did not yet take the roll of bills. "They come from M.
Mornay?" he asked with an air of resistance, for he did not wish to be
under further obligations to the man who would lose most by him.

The lawyer was prepared. M. Mornay had foreseen the timidity
and sensitiveness of Jean Jacques, had anticipated his mistaken
chivalry--for how could a man decline to take advantage of the
Bankruptcy Court unless he was another Don Quixote! He had therefore
arranged with all the creditors for them to take responsibility with
'himself, though he provided the cash which manipulated this settlement.

"No, M'sieu' Jean Jacques," the lawyer replied, "this comes from all the
creditors, as the sum due to you from all the transactions, so far as
can be seen as yet. Further adjustment may be necessary, but this is the
interim settlement."

Jean Jacques was far from being ignorant of business, but so bemused was
his judgment and his intelligence now, that he did not see there was
no balance which could possibly be his, since his liabilities vastly
exceeded his assets. Yet with a wave of the hand he accepted the roll of
bills, and signed the receipt with an air which said, "These forms must
be observed, I suppose."

What he would have done if the three hundred and fifty dollars had not
been given him, it would be hard to say, for with gentle asperity he
had declined a loan from his friend M. Fille, and he had but one silver
dollar in his pocket, or in the world. Indeed, Jean Jacques was living
in a dream in these dark days--a dream of renunciation and sacrifice,
and in the spirit of one who gives up all to some great cause. He was
not yet even face to face with the fulness of his disaster. Only at
moments had the real significance of it all come to him, and then he had
shivered as before some terror menacing his path. Also, as M. Mornay had
said, his philosophy was now in his bones and marrow rather than in his
words. It had, after all, tinctured his blood and impregnated his mind.
He had babbled and been the egotist, and played cock o' the walk; and
now at last his philosophy was giving some foundation for his f