"My friend, you failed us last night at the Cercle, and yet we waited for you long." A hoarse, hollow voice--very measured and slow, as if carefully disciplined to repress groans--yet every now and then there will come a modulation, that shows how rich and cheery it might have been when trolling a _chanson a boire_--how clear and sonorous when, over the stamping of hoofs and the rattle of scabbards, it rang out the one word "Charge!"--how winning and musical when whispering into a small, pink ear laid against his lips lovingly. The Vicomte de Chateaumesnil cares for but one thing on earth now--play, as deep as he can make or find it. It is not a pastime, or a distraction, or an occasional fever-fit, but the sole interest of his existence. A fearfully unworthy and unsatisfactory one, you will say. Granted; but try and realize his condition. He is not forty yet. All the passions of mature manhood were alive within him; not one desire or impulse had been tamed by natural or even premature decay at the time he was struck down, and cut off from every object and aim of his former life, when it was too late to form or turn to others. Imagine how eagerly his strong fiery nature must have grasped at some of these--how it must have appreciated the alternations of glory, pleasure, and peril--all worse than blanks now. You dare not speak to him of woman's love. Worse than all other torments of the Titan's bed of pain, would be wild dreams of impossible Oceanides! Remember that his only change of scene is from one of the waters of Marah to another, according to his own or his physician's fancy about mineral springs. Remember, too, that the cleverest or the most sanguine of them all have only ventured to promise an abatement of his agonies: of their cessation they say no word; nor can they even prophesy that the end will come quickly. He is not allowed to read much, even if his taste lay that way, which it does not; for a literary _Chasseur d'Afrique_ is such a whim as Nature never yet indulged herself in. So perhaps he caught at the only resource that could have saved him from worse things; under which, I presume, is to be included the temptation to take laudanum in proportions by no means prescribed or sanctioned by the Faculty.