"If this is a joke, monsieur, allow me to inform you that it is in execrable taste."
"Therefore I should not have the hardihood to indulge in it, madame. I did not come here with any purpose of joking; what I say to you, I say in all seriousness."
"But I saw my husband at breakfast this forenoon, monsieur. He was not ill, not even indisposed. What, in heaven's name, can have happened to him?"
"Nothing has happened to him; he himself thought it best to put an end to his own life; and he blew out his brains in the Bois de Boulogne, about half-past two o'clock."
Fanny changed color, but did not lose courage.
"No, monsieur; it's not possible," she rejoined; "there is some mistake, it cannot be my husband. Why should Auguste kill himself—young, rich, and happy as he was?"
"It would seem, madame, that he was much less happy than you like to think. And as to being rich, he was so no longer, for he had ruined himself utterly on the Bourse; he was penniless, and he lacked the courage to endure these hard blows of fortune."
"Ruined!" cried the young woman, springing to her feet. "What do you say, monsieur? Ruined! why, then I am ruined, too! Then I have nothing! Why, that would be too terrible; it would be ghastly!"
"Poor Auguste was right," thought Cherami, observing Fanny's despair; "it isn't his death that grieves his wife most."
"But, monsieur, how do you know—how did you learn of this event? And even if my husband is dead, how do you know that he was ruined?"