The admission to the Grand Cercle gave Serge a powerful element of interest in life: He had to manoeuvre to obtain his liberty. His first evenings spent from home troubled Micheline deeply. The young wife was jealous when she saw her husband going out. She feared a rival, and trembled for her love. Serge's mysterious conduct caused her intolerable torture. She dared not say anything to her mother, and remained perfectly quiet on the subject before her husband. She sought discreetly, listened to the least word that might throw any light on the matter. One day she found an ivory counter, bearing the stamp of the Grand Cercle, in her husband's dressing-room. It was in the Rue Royale then that her husband spent his evenings. This discovery was a great relief to her. It was not very wrong to go there, and if the Prince did go and smoke a few cigars and have a game at bouillotte, it was not a very great crime. The return of his usual friends to Paris and the resumption of their receptions would bring him home again. Serge now left Micheline about ten o'clock in the evening regularly and arrived at the club about eleven. High play did not commence until after midnight. Then he seated himself at the gaming-table with all the ardor of a professional gambler. His face changed its expression. When winning, it was animated with an expression of awful joy; when losing, he looked as hard as a stone, his features contracted, and his eyes were full of gloomy fire. He bit his mustache convulsively. Moreover, always silent, winning or losing with superb indifference. He lost. His bad luck had followed him. At the club his losses were no longer limited. There was always some one willing to take a hand, and until dawn he played, wasting his life and energies to satisfy his insane love of gambling. One morning, Marechal entered Madame Desvarennes's private office, holding a little square piece of paper. Without speaking a word, he placed it on the desk. The mistress took it, read what was written upon it in shaky handwriting, and suddenly becoming purple, rose. The paper bore these simple words: "Received from Monsieur Salignon the sum of one hundred thousand francs. Serge Panine." "Who brought this paper?" asked Madame Desvarennes, crushing it between her fingers. "The waiter who attends the card-room at the club." "The waiter?" cried Madame Desvarennes, astonished. "Oh, he is a sort of banker," said Marechal. "These gentlemen apply to him when they run short of money. The Prince must have found himself in that predicament. Still he has just received the rents for the property in the Rue de Rivoli." "The rents!" grumbled Madame Desvarennes, with an energetic movement. "The rents! A drop of water in a river! You don't know that he is a man to lose the hundred thousand francs which they claim, in one night."