"And I hope you understand," said he, sorrowfully, "that this step
practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone
so far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too
much that the last De Rancé, the namesake of the great Abbé, might
have finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you
must go, you must go."

I said, respectfully, that I had to go.

"Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost," said the Bishop.
"And it may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you
may return to me cured, when you see the futility of the task you
wish to undertake." But I was never again to see his kind face in this
world.

And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if
to render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that
the wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
of the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was still the
executor of my father's estate, the whole De Rancé fortune went down
with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
stand between her and want.

Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we