aristocratic vice and began to gamble at the Bourse. In an evil hour he
lost heavily, and then staked heavily to recover himself. But he was to
learn that the law of compensation works with no such pleasing
simplicity, and he rolled to the dark bottom of his folly. There he felt
everything go--his wits, his courage, his probity, everything that had
made him what his fatuous marriage had so promptly unmade. He walked up
the Rue Vivienne with his hands in his empty pockets and stood half an
hour staring confusedly up and down the brave boulevard. People brushed
against him and half a dozen carriages almost ran over him, until at
last a policeman, who had been watching him for some time, took him by
the arm and led him gently away. He looked at the man's cocked hat and
sword with tears in his eyes; he hoped for some practical application of
the wrath of heaven, something that would express violently his dead-
weight of self-abhorrence. The sergent de ville, however, only stationed
him in the embrasure of a door, out of harm's way, and walked off to
supervise a financial contest between an old lady and a cabman. Poor M.
Clairin had only been married a year, but he had had time to measure the
great spirit of true children of the anciens preux. When night had
fallen he repaired to the house of a friend and asked for a night's
lodging; and as his friend, who was simply his old head book-keeper and
lived in a small way, was put to some trouble to accommodate him, "You
must pardon me," the poor man said, "but I can't go home. I'm afraid of
my wife!" Toward morning he blew his brains out. His widow turned the
remnants of his property to better account than could have been expected
and wore the very handsomest mourning. It was for this latter reason
perhaps that she was obliged to retrench at other points and accept a
temporary home under her brother's roof.

Fortune had played Madame Clairin a terrible trick, but had found an
adversary and not a victim. Though quite without beauty she had always