A powerful motive must have impelled him to lie a little less than usual. The truth was that Renée's dowry had for a long time ceased to exist; it had simply become a fictitious asset in Saccard's safe. Although he paid the interest at the rate of two or three hundred per cent, he could not have produced a single security, or have found the smallest solid particle of the original capital. As he half confessed, the five hundred thousand francs derived from the Sologne property had served to give something on account for the house and the furniture, which between them had cost nearly two millions of francs. Saccard still owed a million to the upholsterer and the builder. "I don't claim anything from you," said Renée at last, "I know that I owe you a deal of money." "Oh! my dear," he exclaimed, taking hold of his wife's hand, but without relinquishing the tongs, "what a bad idea you have of me! In two words, now, I have been unlucky at the Bourse, Toutin-Laroche has been playing some foolish pranks, and Mignon and Charrier are a couple of brutes who have swindled me. And that is why I can't pay your bill. You will forgive me, won't you?" He seemed really moved. He thrust the tongs between the logs and made the sparks dart forth like rockets. Renée remembered how nervous he had seemed for some time past. But she was unable to penetrate the astonishing truth. Saccard had reached the point that he had to accomplish a miracle every day. He resided in a house which had cost two millions of francs, he lived on the footing of a prince's civil list, and yet on certain mornings he had not a thousand francs in his safe. His expenditure did not seem to diminish, however. He lived upon debt among a people of creditors who swallowed up, day by day, the scandalous profits which he realised by certain transactions. In the meantime, at the same moment indeed, companies crumbled around; before him yawned fresh and deeper pits, over which he had to spring, being unable to fill them up. He thus went on over mined ground, amid a continuous crisis, settling bills of fifty thousand francs, and not paying his coachman's wages, still marching on with an assurance which became more and more regal, and emptying over Paris, more ragefully than ever, his empty safe, whence the golden river of legendary source still continued to flow.