was some new excuse. He would come to the little wicket with an
unconcerned air:

"Have you a little money, my good Planus? I was worsted again at
bouillotte last night, and I don't want to send to the bank for such a
trifle."

Sigismond Planus would open his cash-box, with an air of regret, to get
the sum requested, and he would remember with terror a certain day when
Monsieur Georges, then only twenty years old, had confessed to his uncle
that he owed several thousand francs in gambling debts. The elder man
thereupon conceived a violent antipathy for the club and contempt for all
its members. A rich tradesman who was a member happened to come to the
factory one day, and Sigismond said to him with brutal frankness:

"The devil take your 'Cercle du Chateau d'Eau!' Monsieur Georges has
left more than thirty thousand francs there in two months."

The other began to laugh.

"Why, you're greatly mistaken, Pere Planus--it's at least three months
since we have seen your master."

The cashier did not pursue the conversation; but a terrible thought took
up its abode in his mind, and he turned it over and over all day long.

If Georges did not go to the club, where did he pass his evenings? Where
did he spend so much money?

There was evidently a woman at the bottom of the affair.