At his first words, however, the Marquis stopped him. 'No no, all my time is taken. I have at this moment a dozen proposals which I must refuse.' Then, as Saccard added, smiling, 'Daigremont sent me; he thought of you,' he immediately exclaimed, 'Oh! is Daigremont in it? Well, well, if Daigremont is with you, so am I. Rely on me.' Then, as his visitor wished to furnish him with at least a little information, so that he might know what sort of an undertaking he was joining, he closed his mouth, with the amiable, easy-going manner of a _grand seigneur_, who does not descend to such details, and has a natural confidence in people's probity. 'Not another word, I beg of you. I do not wish to know. You need my name, I lend it to you, and I am very glad to do so; that is all. Simply tell Daigremont to arrange the matter to his liking.' On stepping into his cab again, Saccard, feeling quite gay, laughed inwardly. 'He will cost us dear,' he thought, 'but he is really charming.' Then he added aloud: 'Driver, Rue des Jeûneurs.' It was here that Sédille had his warehouses and offices on a vast ground-floor at the far end of a courtyard. After thirty years' toil, Sédille, who was a native of Lyons and had retained some workshops there, had at last succeeded in making his silk business one of the best known and best established in Paris, when a passion for gambling, due to chance circumstances, broke out and spread within him with the destructive violence of a conflagration. A couple of strokes, which one after the other yielded him considerable profit, made him altogether lose his head. What was the use of giving thirty years of one's life to the earning of a paltry million, when, in a single hour, by a simple transaction at the Bourse, one can put the same amount in one's pocket? From that time he gradually ceased to take any interest in his business, which simply continued working thanks to pre-acquired motive power. He lived in the sole hope of some triumphant stroke of speculation; and, having fallen on a vein of persistent ill-luck, soon sank in gambling all the profits of his business. The worst of such a fever as this is that a man becomes disgusted with legitimate gains, and finally even loses an exact idea of money. And ruin lay inevitably at the end, for in vain did the Lyons workshops bring Sédille in a couple of hundred thousand francs a year, since speculation swept away three hundred thousand.