of the room strewn with relics of past festival. The scattered
gewgaws, pitiable this morning, when gathered together and coherent,
had turned heads the night before.

"'What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read in
these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse--in this
visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There
were faint red marks on her young face, signs of the fineness of the
skin; but her features were coarsened, as it were, and the circles
about her eyes were unwontedly dark. Nature nevertheless was so
vigorous in her, that these traces of past folly did not spoil her
beauty. Her eyes glittered. She looked like some _Herodias_ of da
Vinci's (I have dealt in pictures), so magnificently full of life and
energy was she; there was nothing starved nor stinted in feature or
outline; she awakened desire; it seemed to me that there was some
passion in her yet stronger than love. I was taken with her. It was a
long while since my heart had throbbed; so I was paid then and there
--for I would give a thousand francs for a sensation that should bring
me back memories of youth.

"'"Monsieur," she said, finding a chair for me, "will you be so good
as to wait?"

"'"Until this time to-morrow, madame," I said, folding up the bill
again. "I cannot legally protest this bill any sooner." And within
myself I said--"Pay the price of your luxury, pay for your name, pay
for your ease, pay for the monopoly which you enjoy! The rich have
invented judges and courts of law to secure their goods, and the
guillotine--that candle in which so many lie in silk, under silken
coverlets, there is remorse, and grinding of teeth beneath a smile,