THE next morning, towards eleven, Mlle. Clara Laneret, better known in night cabarets by her nickname of rlandaise, bent over the banister of her staircase to watch someone go down.

“Eh, monsieur!” she exclaimed suddenly, discreetly recalling him. “You will come again, wo you?”

The “monsieur”—that is to say, M. EusÈbe Raindal, member of the Institute of France, officer of the LÉgion onneur, author of the Life of Cleopatra and of several other important books—the “monsieur” replied in a weak voice, rendered even more hollow by the distance of the steps:

“Yes, yes, certainly, I shall come back!...”

What a disgrace! What turpitude! He had followed that brunette girl, missed his train, lost his self-respect altogether! Ah! if his family, if ZozÉ were to see him on that sordid staircase running out, pursued by the tenderness of Clara rlandaise!... And now, where was he to go? What could he do till the hour of his train?

He stopped on the edge of the pavement, trying to read on the high enameled plate, the name of the street—rue ms ... rue msterdam—which he had forgotten. His head was heavy, his tongue pasty and he longed to resume his sleep.

“I might go and see Cyprien,” he thought, stiffening himself against slumber.

He called a cab. But when he reached the house in the rue ssas, Uncle Cyprien had gone out on his tricycle.

“Not three minutes ago,” the concierge assured him.

In fact, two hundred meters away, in the rue de Fleurus, Cyprien was at that very moment stopping before the house where Johan Schleifmann lived.

He put his tricycle—his “beast” as he would have said—under the arch and asked the concierge to keep an eye on it; then he began to climb the stairs.

“Have you come to fetch me for lunch, my friend?” Schleifmann asked, when he had opened the door to him. “One minute, please! l put my frockcoat on and go with you!”

They walked into the study, a light, spacious, garret, the red tiles of which were half covered with two straw mats.

M. Raindal the younge expression was both amused and ceremonious. He sat in an old armchair and declared, as, with a stage gesture, he took off his wide, brown sombrero:

“No, my friend, I have not come to fetch you.... I have come to talk to you....”

“What has happened?” asked Schleifmann. “This has happened, my dear fellow, that ... that I am presenting to you a man who is done for, absolutely done for!”

And he added, while the Galician lifted his arms in a gesture of surprise.

“Yes, Schleifmann! I have gambled in gold mines and I have lost....”

“I was sure of it!” the Galician exclaimed, stamping angrily on the red tiles. “How much have you lost?”

“One hundred and ten thousand francs, my dear friend!... Yes, there is no need for you to open your eyes so wide.... I said it: one hundred and ten thousand francs!... At the last settlement, on the 15th, I had only lost fifty thousand francs.... Thanks to the help of M. de Meuze, who had written to his friend M. Pums, the father of your pupil, I made arrangements with Talloire, my stockbroker—for I have a stockbroker, is it comical enough, eh! I, a stockbroker!—I made arrangements with Talloire, I say, for him to carry me over; in other words, an operation which allowed me a delay for settling up and permitted me to gamble again.... You know?... Good!... I gambled again.... The smash came, more terrible than ever, organized by the whole Black Band.... I was stubborn; I gave orders right and left.... Result: sixty thousand francs added to my losses!”

“Oh, my poor Raindal, my poor friend!” the Galician murmured, shaking his head.

“That is not all!” Uncle Cyprien added. “I have asked to be carried over again.... Nothing doing! Pums did not receive me, and Talloire kicked me out.... I wrote to the Marquis, who is holidaying at Deauville; no reply!... Therefore, this afternoon, unless I have paid up, I shall be ‘executed’ at the Bourse, and, this evening, I shall execute myself at home!... Tell me, Schleifmann, am I done for or am I not?”

The Galician took a turn round the room, with his usual dragging gait, grumbling:

“Devilish idiot! Devilish idiot!” Then he asked brusquely. “What about your pension, Raindal?... You could perhaps borrow on that?”

“Child!” exclaimed M. Raindal, the younger, paternally. “Do you think that I have waited for you to think of that? Guess what I have been offered for my pension by the usurers: fifteen thousand francs, fifteen paltry thousand francs, not a damned sou more!”

The Galician thought. Then after a time he said:

“Listen, Raindal!... I have put five thousand francs by.... With your fifteen thousand, that would give you twenty.... Do you want them?”

Cyprien came over to press his hand.

“You are a very good friend, Schleifmann,” he said.... “I am very grateful to you.... That would give me twenty, yes, that is to say, a little less than twenty per cent, enough to make arrangements which would cause some men to call me an honest man, and others—a thief. But after that, my friend! After that, how should I exist? I would not have a penny, not a sou.... I would need to look for a job and, what is more difficult, to find one.... No, you see, I would never have the patience.... I prefer to end it at once!”

“You are speaking foolishly!” Schleifmann protested. “To end it!... Why should you?... What a lazy rent-holder you are!... Devil take it, you could work!”

“Work!” grunted Cyprien.... “I would work if I were given work to do!... A man of my age, who has been hammered on ‘Change.... You know, that is not precisely a good recommendation!”

Schleifmann scratched his thick gray hair, thinking fast. At length, he asked:

“Come, my dear Cyprien!... I have an idea.... Supposing you were allowed to carry over, would you be able to re-establish your finances?”

“I can promise nothing!” Cyprien replied. “But there would be a chance.... This crash will not last.... People affirm on all sides that it is due to a maneuver of the Black Band.... Before the end of this fortnight, everything may be changed.... At all events, if one has to blow up, it would be finer to have fought to the end....”

“And, of course, you would gamble again?”

“No, Schleifmann! I would not gamble again.... I would maintain my position, as they say ... my splendid position, and I would wait for things to turn up!”

“Will you swear it to me on the head of your niece, Mlle. ThÉrÈse?”

“I do like this oath idea very much!... Well, let it be so!... I swear it, upon the head of my nephew.... But why all these preambles and questions?”

“Well, here is my idea!” Schleifmann said solemnly. “Where is M. Pums at this hour?”

Uncle Cyprien consulted his watch.

“Noon!... He must be at the Bourse.”

“Very good! I am going to see him.... I shall attempt to get him to have you carried over.... He is not a bad fellow.... At the time of my affair of the reforms, you remember, Cyprien, do you, he was one of those who received me with the least roughness. Again, he left me his son as a pupil, his overdressed gummy son.... Well, I have some hopes.... What do you say?”

“All right! If I am carried over!” Cyprien said skeptically.

“Let me go down, then.... A cab, quick!... Huf! Huf!”

Downstairs, Cyprien asked the concierge to take his “beast” back to the rue ssas, and the two old friends climbed into an open carriage.

They were silent for a few minutes; then M. Raindal said with sarcasm.

“The one time in my life that I have had anything to do with the Jews, you must admit, my dear Schleifmann, has brought me no luck!”

“And M. de Meuze?” the Galician replied aggressively. “M. de Meuze who led you to this, is he a Jew?”

“No, tha true enough,” Cyprien admitted. “He is not a Jew.... But he is Judaized, which comes to the same thing.”

“And I, a Jew, who always told you not to touch that dirty business, how about me?”

“You! Tha different! You are a good Jew!” Cyprien interrupted.

As usual, when he heard that remark, Schleifmann could not dissimulate an angry gesture. M. Raindal regretted his lack of tact and attempted to turn the matter; he gave a mass of minute directions and topographic particulars touching the plan of the Bourse and the place where Pums was to be found.

“By the way,” he added, “take care of the clerks’ pranks! True, they will probably not be very much in a mood for joking to-day.... Nevertheless, be careful of their funny tricks! The first day I myself, went to the Bourse, why, they slipped a paper arrow under the collar of my coat; on it was written in large letters the word: Topper!... I know that it has no importance.... Just the same, it is sometimes very annoying at the moment!”

The carriage stopped before the gate of the monument.

“I shall wait for you here!” Raindal shouted after the Galician as he walked away. “Good luck for us both, and courage, my dear friend!”

Up above, under the colonnade, or top of the steps, was the mournful Bourse of the days of dÉbÂcle. Not a laugh, not a chat, no outburst of merry voices. The faces were ghastly pale; the bravest attempted a joke, twitching their features in lying smiles which were more hideous than grimaces. Over that lugubrious silence came the vociferations of the agents, the outbidding downward, the monotonous shouts of the sales, sales at any price. They were all selling.

An unfortunate mistake led the Galician right into the midst of the agents who were dealing with the gold mines.

Politely he removed his hat and stood before a fair young man who had ceased shouting.

“Excuse me, monsieur,” he said. “Will you be good enough to tell me where I can find M. Pums?”

The other looked at him, dumfounded.... M. Pums, on such a day, at such a time! As if he had nothing else to do! Wait, wait a bit, old man, they are going to give it to you; thel show you M. Pums!... And, of a sudden, on a wink from the blonde young man, with repeated shouts of “M. Pums! M. Pums!” a frantic rush sent the unfortunate Schleifmann forward.

“M. Pums! M. Pums!” The Galician passed from hand to hand, from group to group, thrown from Gold to Cash, from Cash to Gold, from Gold to Values, from Values to External, from External to Turkish. All of them, despite the tragic hour, despite the anguish of that da operations, sought relief for their nerves in that brutal game, relaxed their hearts and arms by molesting the old intruder.... “M. Pums! M. Pums!”

He landed in a corner of the circular hall; his gold-rimmed spectacles all awry, his hat thrown on the floor in a final cuff.

A little messenger, in a bottle-green livery, took pity on his distress.

“Here, monsieur!” he said, picking up Schleifman hat. “You want M. Pums!... I work at the bank.... M. Pums is at his office, 72 rue Vivienne.”

“Thank you, youngster!” the Galician stammered. “Thanks very much, my boy!”

Slowly, looking back at every step for fear of a treacherous blow, and polishing his poor hat with his sleeve, he walked down the steps.

The hall of the bank was crowded with solicitors when the Galician entered. There were agents, bucket-shop brokers, financial go-betweens of all kinds, some seated, their eyes on their shoes, in a defeated attitude, others standing talking by groups in corners or near the windows, with the measured accents one uses in the room of the dying.

Alone, the usher in green livery, seated behind his oak rostrum, seemed indifferent to the cares of those about him and read placidly the serial story in the Petit Journal.

He barely moved his eyelids to decipher the card which Schleifmann pushed before him and fell back to his paper, saying, “Very good, monsieur.... Please take a seat!”

“I do not want a seat!” said Schleifmann, who was holding himself in hand. “I am asking you to take my card to M. Pums, and at once, do you hear?”

“Impossible, sir.... Monsieur le sous-Directeur is attending a conference. He has given orders that no one should come in until he rings....” Then he added, pointing to the gathered agents and brokers: “Besides, all these gentlemen here are ahead of you.”

“I do know whether these gentlemen ...” and here the Galicia voice became more haughty, “are ahead of me.... But I ask you once more to hand my card.... You will tell M. Pums that it is a serious matter, that a ma life is in danger.”

The usher stared impudently at Schleifmann. That dramatic language, that silk hat brushed away, that tie all in disorder, and that foreign accent—some poor devil, some Jewish beggar, no doubt. He did not even condescend to answer and took up his reading again.

“I say, did you hear me?” stammered Schleifmann, incensed by so much insolence. “Yes or no, are you going to take my card in?”

“When M. Pums rings, sir!” the usher reiterated, curling his mustache, his body still bent towards the paper. “I cannot go before he does.”

“You cannot!” Schleifmann almost shouted. “Very good! We shall see....”

He walked towards a tall door painted brown which he supposed to be that of Pums’ office.

“Where are you going?” the usher asked, barring his advance with outstretched arms.

The Galician gave a sharp push of his shoulders and threw the man aside. “I go where it pleases me! Get out of here, damn you!”

Some of the dealers hurried to the call of the usher and surrounded Schleifmann, questioning him. Their intervention completed the Galicia exasperation. He had a sudden vision of the recent scene, a jostling mob, fists shaken, ugly faces. All that might be coming again! His voice became threatening.

“What are you butting into this for?... We are not at the Bourse here! Leave me alone; the first man who lays a hand on me I will kick in the stomach!”

“What! You, Schleifmann!” said Pums, who opened his door when he heard the fracas. “Is it you, talking about kicking people in the stomach?”

The Galician took off his hat and said in lower tones:

“Yes, ... it was I, M. Pums.... They wanted to prevent me from seeing you.... And it is an urgent matter. As I was telling that ill-bred usher, it is a matter of a ma life!”

“But, at the present moment ...” the assistant director protested.

“When a ma life is at stake, there is no such thing as a moment, M. Pums! Believe me.... Let me speak with you. Some day, you will thank me for this!”

“All right!” said Pums, darting a sly wink of apology and connivance at the agents.

Schleifmann followed him in and closed the door behind him.

Pums sat at his desk of purple ebony; Schleifmann opposite him, his back to the door. He laid his hat on the table.

“I shall be brief, M. Pums,” he began. “In a word, as I told you, it is a matter of a ma life.... This man—I shall not conceal his name any longer—is my best friend, M. Cyprien Raindal, brother of M. Raindal of the Institute.... His situation you know already.... If he does not pay up, he is smashed.... And, I may add, if he is smashed, he will kill himself.... I came to ask you to have his account carried over....”

“I would do it with pleasure, M. Schleifmann....” Pums murmured in German, preferring to use that tongue in delicate transactions.

“Allow me!” Schleifmann retorted, also in German and because of an analogous preference. “Allow me! I am not through yet.... You will ask me what interest you have in saving my friend Cyprien.... I will tell you.... It is a sacred interest, it is the interest of your own race, of your family, of your children, of your grandchildren, of your great-grandchildren....”

“Sorry to interrupt you!” said M. Pums, drumming his desk impatiently. “We are right in the middle of a panic.... I have twenty persons to see.... I beg you; you promised me to be brief ... be so!”

“I shall!” said Schleifmann.

And he started an interminable discourse. His thesis was that Pums, who had guided Cyprien in his first speculations, owed him support at the hour of his failure. What, at the most, would this help which would be rather moral support cost him? Not more than a risk, a mere signature. Even if he were to lose the sum which he would thus endorse, would he be thereby impoverished, incommoded in his train of life, he whose actual fortune was estimated at three millions or more? On the other hand, what a glory for Israel, what a noble tradition in the family, what a magnanimous example attached to the name of Pums, this legend would become as it passed from lip to lip: a rich Israelite, generously saving from misery, from suicide, a little ex-official, a Christian, lured to his ruin by a taste for lucre and by gambling!... Such acts, as they multiplied, would do more for the Jews than a thousand gifts to the poor, a thousand sanitary foundations celebrated by the press with much din of praise. Such acts would carry further than charity. For they would have originated from a higher source, from humanity, from justice itself....

The Galician ended at last. Pums looked up with a slight jerk and leaned back in his armchair.

“My dear M. Schleifmann,” he announced in a doctoral tone, “I pay homage to your intentions; you are an excellent man but, allow me to say it, you understand nothing of business....”

A quick blinking of his eyelids accentuated all that was unfavorable in that verdict in M. Pu estimation. He then went on:

“No, nothing, absolutely nothing.... For instance, you imagine that you know what your frien situation is? You do know the first word of it. If M. Cyprien Raindal had listened to me, if he had been satisfied to follow my advice, his losses would be insignificant, about like those of the Marquis de Meuze, his protector, seven, eight, perhaps ten thousand francs at the most.... But your friend wished to show his cleverness.... He followed his own ideas. Il st enfilÉ, as we say in the slang of the Bourse.... And, to-day, he faces the result.... Whose fault is it? Mine or his, tell me?”

“M. Pums,” the stubborn Galician replied. “I did not come here to talk business to you.... You are right, I know nothing about it.... I came as a Jew and a friend to talk heart to you, to talk justice, to enlist your aid for this brave fellow of whom I am very fond.... If you do not give it, it will be a pity and it will be very sad, because he will die of it!”

“Very regrettable,” Pums said, “but not certain.... And then, frankly, M. Schleifmann, think it over.... You are asking too much! He is not a relation, this M. Cyprien Raindal, not a friend, at best an acquaintance.... To help him, to be obliging to him—why, it seems to me that I would not begrudge my time.... But in order to save him, I should have to assume his liability in my own name.... I have no choice between the means.... The panic is general.... No one at all is allowed to carry over his account. The Bank of England itself refuses to allow it.... And, according to you, I should personally pledge myself for one hundred and ten thousand francs on behalf of a man I have seen three times in my life?... No, that is not reasonable.... At every sÉance of the Bourse, there would be ten like him to save.... My fortune would not be sufficient....”

He grew more animated, stamping around the table, his thumbs in the shoulder-holes of his waistcoat.

“And why should I do this? In order that people should speak well of the Jews, burn incense before Israel.... Go on! I do care a rap for the Jews.... I have no prejudices.... Every man for himself.... Let them look after their affairs.... I have no hundred and ten thousand francs to throw out of the window like this!” He came to a stop before Schleifmann. “Bah! do you imagine that I am making anything out of this mining business?... I am caught like the others.... I am losing huge sums, the very eyes out of my head.”

Involuntarily his big round eyeballs showed, in their self-denouncing projection, that he had not lost everything yet. Schleifmann at least did not seem altogether convinced, for he answered Pums, insinuatingly:

“Yet, the fall is instigated by the Black Band.... And the Black Band—they are your friends!”

“My friends?” repeated Pums, suddenly all abashed. Then he recovered his self-control and added: “Oh, yes! nice friends! You may speak of them.... Wretches!... Imbeciles!... Men who stupidly lead the market to ruin, who know nothing but the rise and fall of stocks! Ah! clever work!... I congratulate them!”

Schleifmann did not give up the thread of his arguments.

“Nevertheless, these imbeciles, these wretches, you will see them again, to-morrow, or the next day....”

“What are you talking about?” Pums exclaimed, to mask his hesitation.... “Shall I see them again?... Well, yes, I presume so.... But I guarantee you that I shall tell them what I think. At this moment, see, if I had one of them handy....”

“Alzo! wie gehts!” a cordial voice cried out in German behind Schleifmann.

Pums did not finish his sentence. He had taken on a sinister pallor; his chocolate-colored eyeballs were even more haggard and prominent, as if they were on the point of jumping out of their sockets. Schleifmann turned round and recognized Herschstein.

The head of the Black Band entered by a side door, his hat on his head, smiling, without knocking, as if he were at home, as master; brilliantine shone in silvery eddies in his patriarchal gray beard.

When he caught sight of Schleifmann, he recoiled prudently; his venerable face took on a different expression and he murmured modestly: “Ah! you are busy!”

Pums, who was diligently sorting some papers, did not reply. Schleifmann examined them both in turn, a flame of contempt in his eyes.

“Eh, M. Pums!” he commanded sarcastically. “I am waiting.... Here is one of them.... Go ahead!... Let him know what you think of it.... Tell him! Ha! You have forgotten! Patience, M. Herschstein.... It will come.... M. Pums has a heartload to let out for you!... He is trying to find.... Sit down!”

“What does this mean?” Herschstein asked, icily.

“I shall explain, my dear friend!” stammered Pums. “We were talking of M. Rainda brother, who is losing on the mines.... M. Schleifmann is joking....”

“Am I joking!” the Galician said, smashing his fist on the table so violently that the ink came out of the inkstand. “Truly, here is ground for joking indeed!”

He eyed them both.

“So! you are in league!... So, ‘it goes!’... You, M. Pums, you make up a pair with M. Herschstein.... And you, M. Herschstein, you come to give account!... Congratulations! It must have been a fine massacre!... Write it down, M. Pums. I shall dictate: Profits of September 2nd: M. Cyprien Raindal, one hundred and ten thousand francs.... Hah! M. Pums, how much of that do you get? Ten thousand? Fifteen thousand?” He chuckled, then suddenly his face fell under an intolerable sadness.

“Malediction!” he groaned, prowling about the room. “Malediction and misery!... Yes, ever since Sinai, there has been the same eternal misunderstanding!... God gives His People supreme intelligence and His People prostitute it to the basest works, and then God exacts vengeance because His People ignore Him! It is the whole history of Israel, all their unhappiness.... Malediction! Malediction!... When shall this cease?... You are not a fool, M. Pums, nor you either, M. Herschstein!... But you believe, do you, that the Lord has given you this power of mind so that you can manipulate the markets, and pile up gold.... Madmen that you are! I see the hand of the Lord over you!... It was because they had betrayed His law that your ancestors went to Babylon, to Nineveh and to Egypt! And for the same reason, you will have to go elsewhere!”

He stretched out his arm towards mysterious far distant places.

“Yes! the Lord will make you sleep under tents once more and, with you, there may be some who are innocent, meek and lowly ones, toilers ... unless, beforehand, they all break away from you!”

“Enough, M. Schleifmann!” dryly declared Herschstein, who was gradually recovering his arrogance. “Enough of your jeremiads! We know your ideas.... You are an anti-Semite, a renegade! It is well known!”

Schleifmann lifted his arms again and looked up at the ceiling.

“A renegade!” he repeated, “Anti-Semite!... AdonaÏ! AdonaÏ! Hearest thou what this man is saying to me?”

“Moreover,” added Pums who, like Herschstein, had recovered his ease, “moreover, when it comes to people being expelled, you might very well be before we are, M. Schleifmann! For we are French, we ... while you....”

A frantic laugh cut him short. Schleifmann exploded with bitter merriment, a prey to a fit of wild hilarity.

“French! You French!” he exclaimed, between two sobs of laughter. “But you are neither French, nor German, nor Austrians, nor anything at all—least of all Jews!... Your Jewry oppresses you under your clothing.... It oppresses you in drawing-rooms, in clubs, everywhere you go! It makes you itch, like a haircloth.... You wear it without good grace, without good nature, without pride! You only acknowledge it with regret.... It makes you pale!... You are unacquainted with its most elementary dogmas.... And, were it not that you fear it might hurt you in your business, I wager that, to-morrow morning, you would all seek to be naturalized as Catholics!”

“We do not argue with possessed people!” cried Herschstein, whose forehead and cheeks were striped with livid lines.

“With whom do you argue, if you please?” Schleifmann vociferated. “With dross like yourself? For I tell you, in the words of Ezekiel: ‘You are all dross, all dross of brass, of lead, of iron; you are all dross of silver.... And the Lord shall precipitate you in the crucible to melt you under the breath of His anger!’”

He had given the Hebrew text. Now he gave it in German, and it was such a volley of harsh, thundering syllables that Pums began to take fright. What would the agents and the clerks in the hall nearby think of this noise? He decided to try audacity and said haltingly:

“That will do, M. Schleifmann!... Enough scandal!... I ask you to retire.... Shut up and get out, or damn it all, I will call the police!”

“Ah! that would complete the day!” Schleifmann exclaimed. “No! but do it; do it, so that I can laugh a little more!... Have me removed to the police station for a religious brawl!... Have me arrested!... Jeremiah was arrested twice.... Hamasiah also and Micah as well, and many others.... It is natural.... No, I stay right here, if only just to see it happen! The police!... Ha! ha!”

“He is mad, raving mad!” Pums murmured, his face convulsed.

“Not at all,” Herschstein said in an attempt at irony. “You have got it right.... He is a prophet, my friend, a great prophet!”

“Alas, no, M. Herschstein!” the Galician retorted simply. “I am too old; I have passed the age.... I regret it.... Until the social question is settled for everyone in a scientific fashion, as my master Karl Marx wished it, it would do you no harm to find, on Saturday at the Synagogue, instead of your rabbis who flatter you, a sort of Sophonia who would say to you: ‘Lament! ye dwellers in the market-place! All who traffic shall be....’”

Again the avalanche of Hebrew and German poured forth. Pums, his nerves overtaxed, closed his ears. Herschstein contracted his hand upon his Moses-like beard. Then a light of hope came to his anxious eyes. He had found an objection.

“What about the Christians?” he said victoriously. “Do the Christians traffic?”

“It is no concern of ours what the Christians do!” Schleifmann thundered, cutting the space with a broad forbidding gesture. “They have their God to punish them and socialism to reduce them!... But you ... you are the people of the Lord!... You owe a spontaneous example to the others! You must be better!... enjoy less and suffer more!... Such is your destiny! your difficult glory!... They are unique in the world! You can only avoid them by meeting worse sufferings! You are the people of the Lord!”

Messrs. Pums and Herschstein would have readily deprived themselves of belonging to that people! To show the example to the others, they! Why they, more than the others? No, this time, upon their honor, they failed to understand. And that rain of quotations, that prophetic storm which was still raging! Better leave the place to him, better find some pretext for a flight.

Pums winked rapidly to warn Herschstein and then said deliberately:

“You came to sign those papers, did you?”

“Yes!” Herschstein replied, winking back at him.

“Well, then, will you come this way?...”

He opened a door at the back and kept his hand on the handle, pluckily protecting the retreat of his ally.

“I leave you here, M. Schleifmann!” he said. “The exit is opposite.... As to your lessons to my son, there is no need for you to trouble about them any more. Send me your bill and we shall end it there.... Au plaisir!”

Schleifmann, stupefied by this flight, stood still, with his mouth open. He racked his mind for a biting word, for a last deadly venomous apostrophe! Then he came close to the door through which Pums had disappeared.

“You are the chosen People of the Lord!” he clamored frantically.

He went back into the hall, threw a challenging look at the usher and, recollecting the anxiety of his friend Cyprien, hurried down the steps.

“Well?” M. Raindal asked, with a suppliant movement of his jaw.

“Nothing!” Schleifmann replied. “Nothing!... The scoundrel would not do a thing!”

“I could have sworn to it!” Uncle Cyprien sighed, sliding down despairingly.

Schleifmann sat beside him in the carriage and asked, “Where shall I drive you, my dear Raindal? To the brasserie?”

“No, Schleifmann! I am not hungry.... Better take me home!”

They started. The Galician narrated his interview.

Uncle Cyprien listened in silence, his body crumpled up, his eyes dull, his face rigid. Schleifmann was still relating when they reached the pont des Saints-PÈres.

“And I am not telling you a quarter of it, my friend!” the Galician concluded, still in the fever of his epopee. “I am forgetting some of it!... True, I did not obtain anything!... True, I lost a pupil!... But I have told them what I thought of them!”

“You may have told them what you thought of them, my friend,” Cyprien remarked judiciously. “But that does not prevent my being done for, the most undone of all men!”

He made a motion as if to stride out of the carriage. Schleifmann pulled him back.

“Ho! Cyprien! Wha the matter?”

“I feel very much like chucking myself into the Seine.... It is right here, under my very nose.... It would save me a trip!”

The Galician shrugged his shoulders philosophically.

“Do be foolish, Raindal!... Be serious, my dear fellow! Your brother is not your brother for nothing!... Hl pull you out of it! He will arrange this affair!”

“If he arranges it as you have done, be it said without reproach, Schleifmann, I am sorry for my creditors!” Raindal retorted calmly.

He said not another word until they reached the rue ssas. But while Schleifmann paid the driver, Cyprien felt a sudden sensation of weakness.

“Schleifmann!” he called out.

“I am coming!” the Galician replied.

There was a dull sound. A brown sombrero rolled into the gutter. M. Raindal had sunk, bent in two, on the pavement, all his nerves relaxed, his limbs flabby—a bundle of lifeless flesh with a face of chalk-like pallor.

Near the bed where they had laid Cyprien, still inanimate, Schleifmann wrote feverishly.

“Here!” he told the concierge, who was finishing putting the patien clothes in order, “when you go to the drug-store, you will please send this telegram to M. EusÈbe Raindal, the brother of M. Raindal.”

“M. EusÈbe Raindal!” the concierge protested. “But he is in Paris, monsieur!... He called this morning, just after M. Cyprien had gone, and he told me to inform his brother that he would come again this afternoon.”

“Ah!” said Schleifmann, surprised. “Very well, then; no telegram.... Go straight to the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs! Listen, do frighten the poor man.... Tell him that his brother is ill.”

“Yes, yes! Monsieur may rest assured.... l tell him that as he ought to be told.”

Nevertheless, M. Raindal was stammering with emotion when, half an hour later, he entered the room.

“What? What?” he asked, forgetting to salute Schleifmann. “Cyprien is ill ... gravely?”

“You can see for yourself, monsieur!” the Galician replied. “A stroke!... He fell in the street. My own physician, Doctor Chesnard, has just been here and suggests that it is an embolism. He is coming again to-night. Cyprien had gambled in mining stock and lost enormous sums.”

He added more details. The master interrupted him with distressed exclamations.

“Is it possible!... Had I but known!... Oh! poor fellow!... poor fellow!... Why did he hide it from me?”

When Schleifmann had told him all, there were a few minutes of mutual embarrassment. The two men had at no time felt any affinity for each other. Schleifmann considered M. Raindal a narrow-minded man, timorous and dried up with erudition. He did not deny the merit of the maste works but reproached him with keeping out of the great contemporary problems. M. Raindal, on the other hand, had always disliked Schleifmann, whom he charged with stimulating the subversive instincts of his brother. Now, compelled to sympathize over a pious duty, they both would have liked to destroy those ancient grievances which their loyalty blushed to keep back. M. Raindal was the first to be emboldened enough to fib. He spoke most cordially.

“M. Schleifmann! Circumstances have been such that we have not become fast friends.... But I knew your affection for my poor Cyprien; I knew the wide range of your culture, the reliability of your character; you may be sure that I have always felt the most earnest esteem for you.”

The Galician replied with tactful praise of M. Rainda books.

The discomfort disappeared. It vanished altogether when the concierge came back with drugs, mustard plasters and leeches. Both busied themselves nursing the patient; they had no leisure until the evening.

At the approach of night, Uncle Cyprien awoke from his torpor. He opened his eyes and looked absently about the room. Gradually he appeared to remember.

“Ah, yes!” he murmured. “The Bourse! The smash!”

He tried to stretch himself. A resistance on his left side caused him to frown. He felt his left shoulder with his right hand, which remained free.

“Ah! I am paralyzed, somewhere there.... Tha nice!” he grunted.

Again he inspected the room with the same infant-like stare of his mobile, toneless eyes. The presence of Schleifmann and his brother, who were watching him at the foot of the bed, caused him a momentary perplexity. Who were those men? He hesitated, having the impression that he knew them without being able to call them by name. “EusÈbe ...” he uttered at last. “Sch ... Schleifmann!”

M. Raindal went forward, stretching out his hand. Uncle Cyprien smiled sadly and said in a hoarse voice, stammering a little:

“Heh! What a state they have put me in, these fellows!... I fell on the pavement.... Did Schleifmann explain to you?”

“Yes, my dear, fellow! Do get yourself tired!”

“And the money?” the ex-official went on. “Did Schleifmann tell you that, too? Do you know that I owe one hundred and ten thousand francs. A nice thing for a Raindal!... To die leaving one hundred and ten thousand francs’ debts! If poor Father had seen such a thing!”

“Hush, reassure yourself!” the master said. “First of all, you seem to me on the road to recovery....”

In reply Cyprien touched his dead shoulder.

“As to your debts!” the master added. “I will make them my affair. I have saved ninety thousand francs and I give them up to you without much regret.... My salary and what I get for my books and articles will amply suffice for all of us to live on and even to pay, a little each year, the unpaid balance.... Well, I hope that your mind is relieved.”

“Yes, thanks! I thank you!” Cyprien replied distractedly, the leeches and the mustard plasters pricking him terribly. Then he forced himself to add: “Just the same, poor EusÈbe.... I have very often teased you, worried you! How many jokes have I not played upon you? But if I had been told that I would ruin you one day, I, Uncle Cyprien, with my hundred francs a month, my board at the brasserie and my garret at five hundred francs a year, well!... No, No! It is incredible! To think that all this happened because, because....” His impotent thoughts wandered through the complications of his adventure; then he went on after a pause: “Yes, because ... because, to annoy you, I wished to go to that Mme. RhÂm-BÂhan and there met the ... the marquis ... the marquis de....”

He moved his eyelids, but a weight seemed to dominate them. He fell asleep again, with an uneven breathing, sometimes imperceptible, sometimes snoring and galloping like the wind on a log fire. His cheeks became purple. His throat rattled with a scraping noise. Congestion was beginning. On his return, Dr. Chesnard assumed a face of ill-omen. He made a new prescription and ordered more violent revulsives.

As he was leaving, M. Raindal suggested for the next day a consultation with Dr. Gombauld, his colleague of the Academy of Medicine.

“Well, monsieur!” Dr. Chesnard said contemptuously, shaking his small, bald, gray head.... “I am only a district doctor and have no ambition. I shall speak to you quite frankly. Gombauld or no Gombauld—it will make little difference. An embolism is an embolism. There are not ten thousand treatments for such a case. There is only one, and it is that which I have indicated.... Of course, if a consultation appeals to you, I see no inconvenience in having it.”

The meeting was fixed for noon.

They arranged a bed with a mattress and blankets in the front room, on the green rep couch. Every other hour the Galician, after watching the patient, went to stretch out upon it.

M. Raindal could not sleep. When his regret for his little pupil did not torment him, it was remorse, scruples of his conscience, the need to absolve himself. The halting words of Cyprien rang in his ears, like the repercussion of an endless echo. “All this because I wanted to go to that Mme. RhÂm-BÂhan and met there the ... the marquis!” Surely that was false reasoning! A childish conception of the relation between cause and effect! But the particle of truth which perfumes every error nevertheless spread its venomous aroma in M. Rainda soul. Evidently, he was not responsible for the mortal accident which had struck his brother. Had he been informed in time, he would have made the hardest sacrifices in order to tear the poor fellow away from the wheels of stock-gambling. Yet, who knew if, but for his intervention, for this fatal love which held him, who knew if Uncle Cyprien would have ever met “the ... the marquis?” Who could say but that this love, guilty already of so many faults against sane morality and the sentiments due to others, had not its share also—small but real—in the present calamity?

M. Raindal continued to sigh about it. He was wet with perspiration. At last, fatigue got the better of insomnia. He only awoke at eight, to open the door to ThÉrÈse and Mme. Raindal. Behind them, the bearded head of young Boerzell saluted him.

Summoned by telegram, the women had traveled all night. Their hair in disorder, their faces sprinkled with coal dust, where drying tears had traced white lines, expressed better than their voices the anguish of their night journey. M. Raindal kissed them both with an unusual effusion of tenderness, then led them, himself in tears, to the room of Uncle Cyprien.

The latter was still sleeping, his sleep alternately tumultuous and lethargic; his skin was more purple and blacker in places than the day before, at the beginning of the crisis. Mme. Raindal knelt down beside the bed, her hands crossed. They waited for the doctors, commenting on the drama. The doctors came precisely at noon. The consultation was short. Dr. Gombauld approved his colleagu prescriptions. For the rest, he refused to foretell: nature would decide.

“What did I tell you?” Dr. Chesnard said contemptuously, on reaching the door.

And he promised to return in the course of the evening.

When he did return, the only result of his visit was that their alarm was increased. The physician left, refusing to give an opinion as to the issue of the night.

An hour later, delirium took possession of Uncle Cyprien. At first, there were nothing but vague exclamations, inarticulate complaints. But they soon became more precise. He named people, insulted certain enemies, all the immemorial enemies of Uncle Cyprien, the whole troop of grafters, youpins, calotins and rastas! It was as if they were dancing with triumphant laughter a Satanic round about his cot, breaking his chest with heavy boots, at times, for he took on attitudes of defense or of fear as if he were under the iron shoes of a horse. To exercise this evil rout, he tired his lungs with words of abuse, with insults taken from the vocabulary of his favorite author. His forefinger threatened; his fist hammered the empty space. Suddenly, it seemed that the saraband was scattered. By a chance turn of his memory, one preponderating image effaced the malice of the others: the image of an illustrious statesman, of a minister renowned for his fight against Boulangism. That legendary figure appeared before the bed and, without bending, it reached Uncle Cyprien with the hands that completed its enormous arms.

“Oh! Oh!...” M. Raindal, the younger, roared out in terror. “Here is the old Pirate now!... Oh! those arms!... What arms he has!... Will you go away, old Pirate! Will you let go of me!”

The imaginary grasp was stronger than his cries. In vain he put his hands to his throat. He was choking. He fell back in a coma.

He stayed in it all the evening, all night. The family waited in the next room and took turns watching the patient with Schleifmann, Boerzell and a medical student sent by Dr. Gombauld. At eleven, when the women and Schleifmann had fallen asleep on couches and chairs, M. Raindal signaled with his eyes for the young savant to come to him.

“My dear M. Boerzell,” the master whispered softly, “ThÉrÈse has told me everything this afternoon.... It seems that, while at Langrune, you came to an agreement. For my part, I am very glad of it.... But you know what disaster has befallen us.... Without speaking of poor Cyprien, it is complete ruin for us, and ThÉrÈse will have neither dowry nor expectations of any kind. I wanted formally to warn you, knowing by experience what are the expenses of a mÉnage, ... children to be brought up, expenses....”

“I am very much obliged to you for your sincerity, dear master!” Boerzell interrupted him, in the same tone. “However, these sad events have not modified my intentions towards Mlle. ThÉrÈse....”

He paused, ever careful of measure, of truth and exactness, then added: “I shall not go so far as to tell you that I am indifferent to these money considerations.... On the contrary, it is certain that a dowry and some expectations would have been a precious help to my wif comfort and the education of our children.... But our marriage can easily take place without this help. I feel that I am full of energy, and the prospect of a little more mediocre work is not enough to move the young and vigorous man I feel myself to be.... Therefore, I maintain my request, dear master!”

Schleifmann left the room to join the medical student. M. Raindal and the young savant shook hands affectionately; then, each on a chair, their chins in their hands, they fell gradually asleep.

Towards dawn, the interne woke them all up. The agony had begun. It proved a long one. Uncle Cyprie insurgent soul rebelled against death as it had rebelled against life. Choked by blood, he wished to breathe, to live still; his well arm repulsed the asphyxia with an imperative gesture which seemed to express his indignation.

Finally he lost his breath. He distended his purple face, his twisted lips in a supreme effort and fell back, defeated, immobile, delivered.

Mme. Raindal threw herself on her knees and prayed with abundant tears. Schleifmann, one elbow resting on the marble mantel-piece, his hands over his eyes, quietly chanted some Hebraic words. ThÉrÈse sobbed on her fathe shoulders.

The interne opened the window and pushed back the shutters through which there already came some golden rays.

With the fresh splendor of the morning brightness an outburst of chirping penetrated the room.

It was the sparrows of the Luxembourg which sang merrily on the branches, unwittingly chirping a last good-by to their old friend, Cyprien Raindal.