pretended customer with keen eyes. Perhaps the mournful tones of his
voice reassured him, or he also read the dark signs of fate in the
faded features that had made the gamblers shudder; he released his
hands, but, with a touch of caution, due to the experience of some
hundred years at least, he stretched his arm out to a sideboard as if
to steady himself, took up a little dagger, and said:

"Have you been a supernumerary clerk of the Treasury for three years
without receiving any perquisites?"

The stranger could scarcely suppress a smile as he shook his head.

"Perhaps your father has expressed his regret for your birth a little
too sharply? Or have you disgraced yourself?"

"If I meant to be disgraced, I should live."

"You have been hissed perhaps at the Funambules? Or you have had to
compose couplets to pay for your mistress' funeral? Do you want to be
cured of the gold fever? Or to be quit of the spleen? For what blunder
is your life forfeit?"

"You must not look among the common motives that impel suicides for
the reason of my death. To spare myself the task of disclosing my
unheard-of sufferings, for which language has no name, I will tell you
this--that I am in the deepest, most humiliating, and most cruel
trouble, and," he went on in proud tones that harmonized ill with the
words just uttered, "I have no wish to beg for either help or
sympathy."