Spare time now became my curse, and, joining with a restless and excited spirit, drove me through everything that was to be seen in Paris with an eagerness which soon exhausted its object. Day passed by after day, and the minister took no notice of me. I spun out my meagre funds, like the thread of a spider; but still every hour I saw them diminish. Twice each day I sent to the auberge where I had lodged, to inquire whether little Achilles had yet arrived; and still my disappointment was renewed. Nor was this disappointment one of the least painful of my feelings, for in the solitariness of my being in that great city I would have given worlds for his company, even although I could neither respect nor esteem him. And yet let me not do him injustice; mean qualities were so mingled in him with great ones--his folly was so strangely mixed with shrewdness, and his love of himself so singularly contrasted with the generous attachment which he had conceived towards me, that I hardly knew whether to look upon him with regard or contempt. Yet certainly I longed for his coming; and as the days went by and he came not, even while I smiled at remembering his poltroonery, I could not help hoping that the little coward had met with no obstruction in the road. In the meanwhile, my frugality served to prolong the sojourn of my three louis in my purse far longer than I could have expected, and perhaps my pain with it, at seeing them daily decrease. It was like the handfuls of couscousou that they give in Morocco to persons dying of impalement, the means only of extending moments of misery. One day, however, in passing along the Rue St. Jacques, I saw lying on a book-stall two treatises upon very different subjects; one relating to military tactics, and the other entitled "_The Sure Way of Winning; or, Hazard not Chance_." The price of each was but a trifle, and in a fit of extravagance I bought them both. I had now wherewithal to employ my time, and I studied each of these two books with an ardour which, had it been employed continuously on any great or important subject, might have changed the face of my fortune for ever. The treatise on strategy, though perhaps not the best that ever was written, was, at all events, no detrimental employment; and on it I bestowed one half of my time. The other half was given to "_The Sure Way of Winning_," which was neither more nor less than an elaborate treatise upon gaming; with all the profound calculations of chances necessary to qualify a complete gambler. Thank God, I was not by nature a lover of play, or by such a study I should have been irretrievably lost. As it was, I soon began to look upon the gaming-table as the only resource which fortune held out to me; and with indescribable assiduity and application, I went through every calculation in the book, working them out in my mind hundreds and hundreds of times, till their results became no longer matters of arithmetic, but of memory.