He dropped his elbows upon a broad paper containing some recently written, unfinished memoranda that included figures in column, cast his eyes quite around the apartment, and then covered his face with his palms—­a gesture common enough for a tired man of business in a moment of seclusion; but just as the face disappeared in the hands, the look of serene leisure gave place to one of great mental distress.  The paper under his elbows, to the consideration of which he seemed about to return, was in the handwriting of his manager, with additions by his own pen.  Earlier in the day he had come to a pause in the making of these additions, and, after one or two vain efforts to proceed, had laid down his pen, taken his hat, and gone to see the unlucky apothecary.  Now he took up the broken thread.  To come to a decision; that was the task which forced from him his look of distress.  He drew his face slowly through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles, and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say:  “Now, come; let me make up my mind.”

There may be men who take every moral height at a dash; but to the most of us there must come moments when our wills can but just rise and walk in their sleep.  Those who in such moments wait for clear views find, when the issue is past, that they were only yielding to the devil’s chloroform.

Honore Grandissme bent his eyes upon the paper.  But he saw neither its figures nor its words.  The interrogation, “Surrender Fausse Riviere?” appeared to hang between his eyes and the paper, and when his resolution tried to answer “Yes,” he saw red flags; he heard the auctioneer’s drum; he saw his kinsmen handing house-keys to strangers; he saw the old servants of the great family standing in the marketplace; he saw kinswomen pawning their plate; he saw his clerks (Brahmins, Mandarins, Grandissimes) standing idle and shabby in the arcade of the Cabildo and on the banquettes of Maspero’s and the Veau-qui-tete; he saw red-eyed young men in the Exchange denouncing a man who, they said, had, ostensibly for conscience’s sake, but really for love, forced upon the woman he had hoped to marry a fortune filched from his own kindred.  He saw the junto of doctors in Frowenfeld’s door charitably deciding him insane; he saw the more vengeful of his family seeking him with half-concealed weapons; he saw himself shot at in the rue Royale, in the rue Toulouse, and in the Place d’Armes:  and, worst of all, missed.

But he wiped his forehead, and the writing on the paper became, in a measure, visible.  He read: 

Total mortgages on the lands of all the Grandissimes $—­
Total present value of same, titles at buyers’ risk —­
Cash, goods, and accounts —­
Fausse Riviere Plantation account —­

There were other items, but he took up the edge of the paper mechanically, pushed it slowly away from him, leaned back in his chair and again laid his hands upon his face.