One evening the Joyeuse family was gathered in the little drawing-room, last relic of its splendour, still containing two upholstered chairs, many crochet decorations, a piano, two lamps crowned with little green shades, and a what-not covered with bric-a-brac.

True family life exists in humble homes.

For the sake of economy, there was lighted for the whole household but one fire and a single lamp, around which the occupations and amusements of all were grouped.  A fine big family lamp, whose old painted shade—­night scenes pierced with shining dots—­had been the astonishment and the joy of every one of those young girls in her early childhood.  Issuing softly from the shadow of the room, four young heads were bent forward, fair or dark, smiling or intent, into that intimate and warm circle of light which illumined them as far as the eyes, seemed to feed the fire of their glance, to shelter them, protect them, preserve them from the black cold blowing outside, from phantoms, from snares, from miseries and terrors, from all the sinister things that a winter night in Paris brings forth in the remoteness of its quiet suburbs.

Thus, drawn close together in a small room at the top of the lonely house, in the warmth, the security of their comfortable home, the Joyeuse household seems like a nest right at the top of a lofty tree.  The girls sew, read, chat a little.  A leap of the lamp-flame, a crackling of fire, is what you may hear, with from time to time an exclamation from M. Joyeuse, a little removed from his small circle, lost in the shadow where he hides his anxious brow and all the extravagance of his imagination.  Just now he is imagining that in the distress into which he finds himself driven beyond possibility of escape, in that absolute necessity of confessing everything to his children, this evening, at latest to-morrow, an unhoped-for succour may come to him.  Hemerlingue, seized with remorse, sends to him, as to all those who took part in the work connected with the Tunis loan, his December gratuity.  A tall footman brings it:  “On behalf of M. le Baron.”  The visionary says those words aloud.  The pretty faces turn towards him; the girls laugh, move their chairs, and the poor fellow awakes suddenly to reality.

Oh, how angry he is with himself now for his delay in confessing all, for that false security which he has maintained around him and which he will have to destroy at a blow.  What need had he, too, to criticise that Tunis loan?  At this moment he even reproaches himself for not having accepted a place in the Territorial Bank.  Had he the right to refuse?  Ah, the sorry head of a family, without strength to keep or to defend the happiness of his own!  And, glancing at the pretty group within the circle of the lamp-shade, whose reposeful aspect forms so great a contrast with his own internal agitation, he is seized by a remorse so violent for the weakness of his soul that his secret rises to his lips, is about to escape him in a burst of sobs, when the ring of a bell—­no chimera, that—­gives them all a start and arrests him at the very moment when he was about to speak.