Risler was stupefied.

"I have ruined the house--I?"

"Worse than that, Monsieur. You have allowed it to be ruined by your
wife, and you have arranged with her to benefit by our ruin and your
dishonor. Oh! I can see your game well enough. The money your wife has
wormed out of the wretched Fromont, the house at Asnieres, the diamonds
and all the rest is invested in her name, of course, out of reach of
disaster; and of course you can retire from business now."

"Oh--oh!" exclaimed Risler in a faint voice, a restrained voice rather,
that was insufficient for the multitude of thoughts it strove to express;
and as he stammered helplessly he drew the grating toward him with such
force that he broke off a piece of it. Then he staggered, fell to the
floor, and lay there motionless, speechless, retaining only, in what
little life was still left in him, the firm determination not to die
until he had justified himself. That determination must have been very
powerful; for while his temples throbbed madly, hammered by the blood
that turned his face purple, while his ears were ringing and his glazed
eyes seemed already turned toward the terrible unknown, the unhappy man
muttered to himself in a thick voice, like the voice of a shipwrecked man
speaking with his mouth full of water in a howling gale: "I must live!
I must live!"

When he recovered consciousness, he was sitting on the cushioned bench on
which the workmen sat huddled together on pay-day, his cloak on the
floor, his cravat untied, his shirt open at the neck, cut by Sigismond's
knife. Luckily for him, he had cut his hands when he tore the grating
apart; the blood had flowed freely, and that accident was enough to avert