This morning, at half-past nine, M. Pascal, dressed in his morning gown, was walking up and down the floor of his office with great agitation; his night had been one of long and feverish sleeplessness. A well-paid spy, employed for two days to observe what was taking place in the home of Mlle. Antonine, had reported to M. Pascal the visit of the prince to President Hubert. This prompt and significant step left no doubt in the mind of the financier concerning his own plans in connection with the young girl; this cruel disappointment was complicated with other resentments: first, rage at the recognition of the truth that, notwithstanding his millions, his will, obstinate as it was, was obliged to submit before impossibilities, all the more painful because he had believed himself at the very door of success. That was not all. If he had no love for Antonine, in the noblest acceptation of the word, he did feel for this child, so lovely and charming, an ardent passion, ephemeral, perhaps, but of extreme intensity as long as it lasted; and so, with a sort of ferocious egotism, he reasoned with himself: "I would like to possess that little girl at any price. I will marry her if I must, and when I am tired of her an annuity of twelve or fifteen thousand francs will rid me of her. I am rich enough to gratify myself in that caprice." All this, however detestable, was, from the standpoint of society as it existed, perfectly possible and legal, and it was, we repeat, that possibility which rendered his want of success so bitter to M. Pascal. Another thing still: what he felt for Antonine being, after all, only a sensual desire, did not tolerate the exclusive preference of pure love; so that, in his passionate longing for this young girl of innocent and virginal beauty, he had not been less strongly impressed by the provoking charms of Madeleine, and, by a refinement of sensuality which aggravated his torture, M. Pascal had all night evoked, by his inflamed imagination, the contrasting loveliness of these two beautiful creatures. And at this hour in which we see him M. Pascal was a prey to the same torment.