still of the opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask
which so often has amazed you by its impassiveness?' he asked,
stretching out that livid face which reeked of money.

"I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old
man had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a
strange visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold
personified. I shrank, shuddering, from life and my kind.

"'Is it really so?' I thought; 'must everything be resolved into
gold?'

"I remember that it was long before I slept that night. I saw heaps of
gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I
confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another
quiet, innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a
life of toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of
slumber, Fanny's sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I
thought of nothing else."



"Will you take a glass of _eau sucree_?" asked the Vicomtesse,
interrupting Derville.

"I should be glad of it."

"But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns," said Mme.
de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.