Thereupon, he abandoned himself to his taste for pleasure, augmented by a very keen penchant for the fair sex; and the fair sex is never ungrateful to a rich and open-handed man. Arthur was not handsome: his crooked nose, his small eyes, and his pointed chin, did not tend to make him a very attractive youth; however, the women told him again and again that he was charming, adorable, irresistible, and he believed it. We are so ready to believe anything that flatters our self-esteem! And yet, Arthur was no fool; indeed, he had his share of wit; but he was totally lacking in common sense, and without common sense, wit, as a general rule, serves no other purpose than to make one do foolish things. La Rochefoucauld makes this reflection with respect to women; for my part, I consider it perfectly applicable to both sexes. At thirty years, Beau Cherami had spent, consumed, swallowed, his entire inheritance. But he had been noted for his costumes, his horses, his conquests, his love affairs. Eight years to run through a fortune worth thirty-five thousand francs a year--that is not such a very rapid pace; we often see young men who use up three times as much in much less time; to be sure, young Arthur did not gamble on the Bourse. Being obliged then to sell his furniture, horses, and silverware, Cherami lived some time longer on the product of the sale; but his friends already began to find him less clever and amiable, and the women no longer called him their handsome Arthur. That was because he could no longer make them beautiful presents; and instead of loaning money to his friends and paying their shares of the expense of an orgy, he asked them to pay for him, and often applied to them for loans. At thirty-five, Arthur was what these good friends of his called utterly _degomme_: in other words, ruined. After he had lived for some time on credit, his tailor, his shirtmaker, his bootmaker, refused to trust him any more; whereupon he was obliged to wear garments that were worn and faded, and eventually threadbare; hats that had turned from black to rusty; worn boots that were rarely polished. When Cherami, in this garb, said to one of his former acquaintances: "I have left my purse at home; lend me twenty francs, will you?" the acquaintance would make a wry face and loan him five francs instead of twenty, and sometimes nothing at all; for a man in a threadbare coat does not inspire confidence. We loan money to the rich, because we think that they will return it. After some time, Beau Arthur found that this last source of income was exhausted. He had said so often to his quondam friends: "I have forgotten my purse," or: "I have just discovered that there's a hole in my pocket," that they fled as soon as they saw him; many of them even ceased to return his bow, and pretended not to know him. Misfortune is the reef on which friendship is wrecked.