"Who's that?" queried Monpavon, at sight of the unfamiliar hand and the Irishman's nervous excitement. "Ah! doctor, if you mean to read everything we shall never finish." Jenkins, with burning cheeks, his two letters in his hand, was consumed by a fierce longing to carry them away in order to gloat over them at his leisure, to torture himself with delicious pain by reading them, perhaps also to use that correspondence as a weapon against the imprudent creature who had signed it. But the marquis's rigid demeanor frightened him. How could he divert his attention, get rid of him? An opportunity presented itself unsought. A tiny sheet, written in a senile, tremulous hand, had found its way between those same letters, and attracted the attention of the charlatan, who said with an artless expression: "Oho! here's something that doesn't look like a billet-doux. 'My dear duke, help, I am drowning! The Cour des Comptes has stuck its nose into my affairs again'--" "What the devil's that you're reading?" exclaimed Monpavon abruptly, snatching the letter from his hands. And in an instant, thanks to Mora's negligence in allowing such private letters to lie around, the terrible plight in which he would be left by his protector's death came to his mind. In his grief he had not as yet thought of it. He said to himself that, amid his preparations for leaving the world, the duke might very well forget him; and, leaving Jenkins to finish alone the drowning of Don Juan's casket, he returned hurriedly to the bedroom. As he was about to enter, the sound of voices detained him behind the lowered portiere. It was Louis's voice, as whining as that of a pauper under a porch, trying to move the duke to pity for his distress and asking his permission to take a few rolls of gold that were lying in a drawer. Oh! what a hoarse, wearied, hardly audible reply, in which one could feel the effort of the sick man compelled to turn in his bed, to remove his eyes from a distant point already clearly distinguished: "Yes, yes--take them. But for God's sake let me sleep! let me sleep!" Drawers opened and closed, a hurried, panting breath. Monpavon heard no more, but retraced his steps without entering the room. The servant's ferocious greed had given his pride the alarm. Anything rather than degrade himself to that point.