recovered a little, but he was fair from convalescent. She wrote
hopefully to her father; so did Georges; indeed both the young
man and his wife, ignorant of the hold which the disease had really
got upon him, thought things to be a great deal better than they
actually were. But as days went on and the cough continued, they
made up their minds that St Raphael did not suit Georges, and
resolved to go on to Nice. March was already far advanced; Nice
would not be expensive now. So they went, but still Georges got
no better. He even began to get weaker; the cough `tore' him,
he said, and he leaned wearily on his wife's arm when they walked
out together. Clearly he would not be able to return to Paris and
to work that spring. Pauline, too, was not well, the long nursing
had told on her, and she had, besides, her own ailments, for already
the prospect of motherhood had defined itself. She wrote to her
father that Georges was still poorly and that they should not return
home till May. But before the first ten days of April had passed,
something of the true state of the case began to dawn on Saint-Cyr.
`I shall never again be strong enough to work hard,' he said to
himself, `and I must work hard if I am to pass my doctorate
examinations. Meantime, all Pauline's dot will be spent. I may
have to wait months before I can do any consecutive work; perhaps,
even, I shall be unable to make a living by writing. I am unfit
for any study. How can I get money--and get it quickly--for her
sake and for the child's?'

"Then the thought of the tables at Monte Carlo flashed into his mind.
Eight thousand francs of Pauline's dot remained; too small a sum
in itself to be of any permanent use, but enough to serve as capital
for speculation in rouge et noir. With good luck such a sum might
produce a fortune. The idea caught him and fascinated his thoughts