Before he betook himself to Bohemia, Gano had spent no small portion of his time in the brilliant circle Madame Astier's grace and wit had gathered round her. The young American not only cherished an enthusiasm for his middle-aged hostess, but he discovered a deep admiration as well for the lady's husband, a distinguished advocate, whom she obviously adored. Gano's sensibilities did, it is true, shrink at first before the man's pitiless cynicism, which spared few persons and fewer ideals. But although merely dazzled at the beginning by his brilliancy, Gano came in time to be proud of his friendship, and to recognize in his point of view a wholesome, bitter tonic, a corrective to certain ills that young flesh is heir to. This man of fifty-four, who would have shrugged derisively at the notion of "teaching" anybody anything, was still in many young eyes the very type of the modern philosopher: believing blandly in the scientific point of view, unmoved by sentimentalities, unblinded by enthusiasms, keen-witted, farsighted, practising with eminent success, in the most highly civilized society in the world, the most difficult of the arts--the art of living. Gano was very much shaken by the terrible story of the double suicide of this brilliant pair, whose marriage had been so romantic, whose life together had seemed the one ideal of the old kind that they admitted into their smiling existence. M. Astier, as all the world was being told, had returned home as usual on this particular afternoon from the Palais de Justice. His wife had been holding a reception. One lady remained after the other visitors had gone. When at last the door closed upon her, too, Madame Astier went to her husband's library and told him that the last visitor had outstayed the others to say that her husband was going to fight a duel on her account the next day with M. Astier, with whom she (the visitor) had an intrigue of three years' standing. She had come to Madame Astier to prevent the men's meeting. A violent scene between husband and wife. "The end has come!'" exclaims Astier. "Yes, yes; we can't go on living after this!" cries the distracted wife. She flies to her dressing-room and attempts to swallow poison. Astier's secretary rushes after her. While he is wrenching the poison away, the report of fire-arms. Both rush back to the library, where they find M. Astier bathed in blood, dying. The wife, before she can be hindered, puts the smoking pistol to her head, fires another fatal shot, and the tragedy is done. Gano had talked to Driscoll from time to time of the Astiers, of Clémenceau, and the other habitués of those delightful soirées, and of the regret he sometimes felt that he had not told his friends frankly of the change in his fortunes, and the reason he did not any longer frequent the Faubourg St. Honoré.