And François saw the crowd no more, his head was turning, he placed louis, packages of bills, on one square, diagonally, transversally. He played a long time losing as much as he wanted to. He turned away at last and saw the whole brilliant hall where the players still pressed about the tables as before. Noticing a young man whose chagrined face revealed that he had had no luck, François smiled at him and asked whether he had lost. The young man replied angrily: "You too? A Russian just won more than two hundred thousand francs by my side. Ah! if I only had a hundred francs more, I would make up what I have lost twenty or thirty times over. But Oh, I have beastly luck, I am hoodooed, done for. Imagine..." And taking François by the arm, he led him toward a divan on which they sat down. "Imagine," he continued, "I have lost everything. I am almost a thief. The money I have lost did not belong to me. I am not rich, I had a position of trust. My employer sent me to recover claims in Marseilles. I got them. I took the train to come here and try my luck. I lost. What is there left? They will arrest me. They will say that I am a dishonest man, even though I haven't ever profited of the money I took. I have lost all. If I had won, no one would have reproached me. What luck I have! There is nothing for me to do but to kill myself." And suddenly rising the young man put a revolver to his mouth and fired. The corpse was carried away. Several players turned their heads a moment, but none of them bothered at all, and most of them took no notice of the incident which, however, made a profound impression on the mind of the baron des Ygrées. He had lost all that Macarée had left him and the child. As he went out François felt the whole universe contract about him like a tiny cell, and then like a coffin. He got back to the villa where he lived. At the door he passed Mia who was chatting with a stranger who carried a valise. "I am a Hollander," said the man, "but I live in Provence and I would like to hire a room for several days; I have come here to make some mathematical observations." At this moment the baron des Ygrées sent a kiss with his left hand to Mia, while with a revolver in his right he blew his brains out and rolled in the dust. "We have only one room to rent," said Mia, "but it has just become free." And she quickly closed the eyelids of the baron des Ygrées, gave cries of grief, and aroused the neighborhood. * * * As to the young child, whom his father had in such a characteristic burst of lyricism named for aye Croniamantal, he was gathered up by the Dutch traveller who soon carried him off to bring him up as his own son. On the day they left, Mia sold her virginity to a millionaire trap-shooting-champion, and it was the thirty-fifth time that she had lent herself to this little commercial transaction. [Illustration 03] IX. PEDAGOGY