A few weeks, however, and the darkest hour of the storm had passed.
Moments of relaxation brought beams of sunlight through the dissolving
beams of sunlight through the dissolving clouds; drives, walks, and
even visits were gradually resumed.

A fit of illness brought Cassier to his senses. A forced abstinence
for a few weeks saved him from the last and most terrible lot of
confirmed drunkenness; but ruin was written with his own hand on the
firm that made him wealthy. Quick-footed rumor, that hates the well-
being of man, was abroad at its deadly work; public confidence in the
bank began to wane, and each depositor lent the weight of his individual
interest to accelerate the financial crash. The stone set in motion
down the mountain assumes a force that no power could stay; on it will
go until it rests in the plain From the eminence of his boasted wealth
the usurer found this turn come to whirl around on the wheel of
fortune and yield to some other mortal, who is the toy of fortune, to
grasp for a moment the golden key of avarice and ambition.

At length the crash has come. One of the largest depositors sends
notice that in a week he will withdraw his funds.

Cassier saw ruin staring him in the face; when this sum was paid he
would be a pauper. He would not dig, and in the pride of his heart
he would not beg. Conscience, long seared in the path of impiety, has
no voice to warn, no staff to strike. Cassier, wise in his generation
of dishonesty, knows what he will do, and nerves himself for a
desperate undertaking which leads us deeper and deeper into the history
of crime, into the abysses of iniquity which invoke each other.