table a bank-note with a gesture absolutely careless.

She was in danger of distrusting her eyes.

"Is it a dream?" she cried. "Is it a vision from the _Thousand and
One Nights_, or is it really a bank-note?"

"Mademoiselle, it is the mess of pottage," the young man answered
gloomily. "It is the cause of my sadness: for that miserable money, and
more that is to come, I have sold my birthright."

She was on a ship--no, what is it, your expression?--"at sea"!

"I am a poet," he explained; "but perhaps you may not know my work; I
am not celebrated. I am Tricotrin, mademoiselle--Gustave Tricotrin, at
your feet! For years I have written, aided by ambition, and an uncle
who manufactures silk in Lyons. Well, the time is arrived when he is
monstrous, this uncle. He says to me, 'Gustave, this cannot last--you
make no living, you make nothing but debts. (My tragedies he ignores.)
Either you must be a poet who makes money, or you must be a partner who
makes silk,' How could I defy him?--he holds the purse. It was
unavoidable that I stooped. He has given me a sum to satisfy my
creditors, and Monday I depart for Lyons. In the meantime, I take
tender farewells of the familiar scenes I shall perhaps never behold
again."

"How I have been mistaken!" she exclaimed. And then: "But the hunger
you confessed?"

"Of the soul, mademoiselle," said the poet--"the most bitter!"