He knew he could obtain no money anywhere after this. In fact, now that he clearly envisaged things, it seemed astonishing that the bubble had not burst long ere this. It had been solely due, as he now felt, to Leimann’s extraordinary skill in hiding his own pecuniary embarrassments that Borgert himself had been able to run up large accounts without any tangible security whatever. For Leimann, he remembered, had backed him up throughout. Dazed and spent, Borgert lay down on his divan. He did not wish to go to the Casino, for he felt no appetite, and he was not in the mood to play his accustomed pranks and capers for the delectation of his comrades. He did not want to see or hear of anybody. He wanted to be all by himself and indulge in his morose reflections. His eye wandered around the elegant appointments of his dwelling. These fine paintings on his walls; this handsome and costly furniture, most of it carved in solid oak; the soft Oriental rugs underfoot which deadened every sound and made his bachelor home so comfortable and cosy; those heavy, discreet hangings of finest velvet which shut out the intrusive light and kept his apartments in that epicurean _chiaroscuro_ which his sybarite taste demanded--what a pity, what an infernal shame, to have to surrender into the hands of these vermin of usurers all these trappings of his bachelor freedom! Of course, they would struggle and fight for it all, and each one of them would scramble to be the first to assert and enforce his rights. Rather amusing it would be, he thought, but alas! he himself would not be able to view the scene. There was no help for it. Within a few days the crash must come; he could see no escape. But what was to become of himself? He had never seriously thought of that before. Should he allow himself to be simply thrown into the street? Perhaps, after all, they would even put him in quod? Time pressed, and a decision must be reached quickly--at once. Really, on sober reflection, he could not very well see why he should remain any longer in this vale of tears after all his glory and his pleasures would be gone. To learn anew, after losing all caste, after dismissal from the army in disgrace and dishonor, to learn a bread-winning calling and to have to work like everybody in that despised throng of perspiring, vulgar toilers--surely, that was not at all to his taste. From infancy up he had been reared in disdain of labor--had acquired, one by one, tastes and habits of thought that seemed irreconcilable with a life of sober, plain living and thinking, with a life where his part would be that of a subordinate. It seemed an impossible thing to him. Dimly he felt that to do so would require energy, self-denial, and diligence, and of all these he possessed not a trace. Should he then make an end of it, put a bullet in his brain?