A few days later he received a very polite note from the baron in which he called on him to pay for his underwritten shares, and enclosed a polite account.
Payot's eyes swam when he saw the amount, £40,000, which had to be met on the making-up day at the end of the month.
He went to his banker's with a sad heart, and was closeted with him for a couple of hours, ascertaining the market value of his securities. They added up to £36,000 in all. There was nothing left but his house and furniture, and he owed £40,000.
"Sell everything I have at once," he replied, "I am ruined," and he shook hands with the banker and left the bank with a heavy heart.
He walked, for he was afraid to spend the money on a cab, and arrived at Monsieur Beaupaire's house.
How terribly dark the future loomed up before him, what visions floated through his fevered brain. He pondered over the dark days of poverty which faced him in lurid colours. Where was the dot he promised his daughter for her marriage portion? What would she think of him now? How could Delapine marry her when she was without a sou? How could she earn her living except as a despised and pitied governess? He thought of his old comrade Duval—the brave old man in spite of his vanity and eccentricities—now lying cold in the grave. He thought of his son Pierre, a parricide and an outcast like Ishmael of old, a wild man, whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against him, and he trembled at the awful vista it awoke in his mind. He looked out of the windows and saw the carriages pass with the footmen on the box and handsome women inside beautifully dressed, and watched them going to the opera with their lovers or husbands, and he shuddered as he felt that his poverty would cause all men to forsake him, and he would have to face the world alone, uncared-for and despised by all, even his nearest friends. How could he face poverty with its lean fleshless hands and sunken eyes, the single, cold, comfortless room, and the pangs of hunger? He thought of all his friends, wealthy, influential, talented, and how they would turn their heads on one side when he passed by. Oh, how bitter was the world! He thought of the saying he had so often repeated at the festive board—'Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and the world will laugh at you,' and he felt the fearful truth and reality of it at last. "When a man is down, kick him. Yes, that is the way of the world," he said to himself, "ah, yes, it is a cruel, cruel world when the gilding is all brushed off. Alas, the world has no sympathy for the gambler who loses."
He was brooding over his terrible blow when M. Beaupaire entered the room.
"Bon jour, mon ami, I am delighted to see you."
Payot reached out his hand and turned his face aside.