The old man's amazement redoubled. With another glance at Auguste, he began once more: "I received a superficial education; but I was to have twenty thousand francs a year, and I was assured that I knew quite enough. I was left my own master altogether too early in life. I was passionately fond of pleasure; I was especially addicted to that charming sex which--of which I must say no evil, since it is my Anna's. But I abandoned myself blindly to my passions, and I squandered my fortune with mistresses who deceived me, and with false friends who helped me ruin myself." Here Auguste could not restrain a sigh, but he motioned to the old man to go on. "Sometimes I determined to reform, but I was never able to listen to the counsel of reason. When I was thirty-nine, I had spent all my properly and I was entirely unused to work. "Thereupon a generous woman, who loved me for myself alone, determined to throw in her lot with mine. She possessed a competence; she married me and gave me my Anna. I might have been happy, but I had become so accustomed to fashionable life that I had a craving for spending money. I longed to supply my wife with the beautiful things that I saw on other women; it angered me to see women who were not her equals wearing cashmere shawls. In vain did she tell me that my love alone was enough for her. I persuaded myself that she was concealing her wishes from me, and that she suffered all sorts of privations. Endeavoring to add to our means, I did the wildest things: I gambled, I mortgaged our property, and I reduced to want the woman who had entrusted her destiny to me. Thereupon, realizing the error of my ways, I tried to find employment, but I was no longer young, and I could not succeed in obtaining it. Regret tore my heart, and blanched my hair prematurely; I look to you like a very old man, and I am not yet sixty. My wife did not reproach me; she died commending our daughter, then eight years old, to my care. I tried to utilize what little talent I had, but it was very little, and as I grew older I rarely found anything to do. Meanwhile my Anna was growing, and she began very early to work to support her unhappy father. If you knew, monsieur, all that I owe her! How many nights she has worked, in order to add to her earnings! Never any rest, never any pleasure for her; and yet, not a word of complaint; it is she who comforts me when she sees that I am more than ordinarily depressed, when I reproach myself for my misconduct. Oh! I do not try to conceal my wrong-doing, monsieur. It was my folly alone that led me to lose my own fortune and squander that of my wife. My daughter might be happy, and yet for ten years past, only toil and tears have been her lot! And I alone am the cause! Do you still think that I am deserving of your pity?" "Yes, monsieur," said Auguste, pressing the stranger's hand. "But what impelled you to such a desperate resolution to-night?"