“So fast that I can hardly believe you have come to this. But it is really so!”
“Where are the twenty thousand francs, Martin?”
“Why, I have not got them, M. Louis! I have only five thousand left besides what you took.”
At this, my strength almost failed me. I at once realized I was completely ruined. Fifteen months before, I had withdrawn twenty thousand francs from Martin’s hands under the pretext of investing them in a particularly advantageous manner. A trip to Germany, play, and some pressing debts absorbed this sum without Martin’s knowing it. I quietly dismissed him, saying I would see him again the next day. Left alone, I balanced my accounts. Alas! my affairs were desperate! The five thousand francs in Martin’s possession were all I had left, and my debts amounted to four times that sum!
All day yesterday I remained stupefied, as it were, at so unexpected a disclosure. My father had gone to Paris. I resolved to take refuge in the country, and come to some decision. I went, scarcely knowing what I was about, angry with myself, with everybody else, and desperate. All night I sought some way of escape from the terrible blow that had befallen me. I walked to and fro. From anger I sank into the most profound dejection. The very thought of applying myself to any occupation whatever appeared, above all, intolerable.
When morning came, I mechanically went to walk beside the river that runs about a hundred yards from our house, and fell into a gloomy reverie. The sleepless nights, the rioting, the habits to which I had successively given myself up for years, the painful anxiety of the previous night, had excited and weakened my nervous system. I was, as it were, deprived of my reason.
While I was thus lingering on the shore, it seemed as if a mysterious voice invited me to bury myself in the current before me. A terrible struggle took place between my reason, the instinct that restrained me, and the hallucination that kept drawing me nearer the bank. Reason failed me. In a fit of despair, I cast myself into the stream. As soon as I felt the cold water, my reason, my faith, awoke as ardent as in the days of my boyhood. A cry issued from the very depths of my soul: “O Mary, save me!” It would be impossible to tell you with what fervor, what terror, I uttered this short prayer—impossible, also, to express the immense joy that filled my heart when I realized I was saved. But what confusion mingled with this joy—what gratitude, too, what admiration of the designs of God, when I saw it was you who had rescued me at the peril of your life!
CHAPTER IX.
BROTHER AND SISTER.
M. Louis Beauvais had finished his story.