"Wait, Moloch, wait; you and I are not done with each other yet! Wait!
I shall come back, and when I do, look to yourself! Two million
francs, and every one of them mine!"

He laid his head on his hands. It ached dully. Perhaps it was the
wine.




CHAPTER II

THE BUTTERFLY MAN

The passing and repassing shadows of craft gave a fitful luster to the
river; so crisply white were the spanning highways that the eye grew
quickly dim with looking; the brisk channel breeze which moved with
rough gaiety through the trees in the gardens of the Tuileries, had,
long hours before, blown away the storm. Bright sunshine, expanses of
deep cerulean blue, towering banks of pleasant clouds, these made Paris
happy to-day, in spots.

The great minister gazed across the river, his hands under the tails of
his frock, and the perturbation of his mind expressed by the frequent
flapping of those somber woolen wings. To the little man who watched
him, there was a faint resemblance to a fiddling cricket.

"Sometimes I am minded to trust the whole thing to luck, and bother no
more about him."