Meanwhile the Count de Tremorel, who was resolved more than ever on suicide, ascending the boulevards came to his inamorata’s house, which was near the Madeleine.  He had introduced her some six months before into the demi-monde as Jenny Fancy.  Her real name was Pelagie Taponnet, and although the count did not know it, she was his valet’s sister.  She was pretty and lively, with delicate hands and a tiny foot, superb chestnut hair, white teeth, and great impertinent black eyes, which were languishing, caressing, or provoking, at will.  She had passed suddenly from the most abject poverty to a state of extravagant luxury.  This brilliant change did not astonish her as much as you might think.  Forty-eight hours after her removal to her new apartments, she had established order among the servants; she made them obey a glance or a gesture; and she made her dress-makers and milliners submit with good grace to her orders.  Jenny soon began to languish, in her fine rooms, for new excitement; her gorgeous toilets no longer amused her.  A woman’s happiness is not complete unless seasoned by the jealousy of rivals.  Jenny’s rivals lived in the Faubourg du Temple, near the barrier; they could not envy her splendor, for they did not know her, and she was strictly forbidden to associate with and so dazzle them.  As for Tremorel, Jenny submitted to him from necessity.  He seemed to her the most tiresome of men.  She thought his friends the dreariest of beings.  Perhaps she perceived beneath their ironically polite manner, a contempt for her, and understood of how little consequence she was to these rich people, these high livers, gamblers, men of the world.  Her pleasures comprised an evening with someone of her own class, card-playing, at which she won, and a midnight supper.  The rest of the time she suffered ennui.  She was wearied to death:  A hundred times she was on the point of discarding Tremorel, abandoning all this luxury, money, servants, and resuming her old life.  Many a time she packed up; her vanity always checked her at the last moment.

Hector de Tremorel rang at her door at eleven on the morning in question.  She did not expect him so early, and she was evidently surprised when he told her he had come to breakfast, and asked her to hasten the cook, as he was in a great hurry.

She had never, she thought, seen him so amiable, so gay.  All through breakfast he sparkled, as he promised himself he would, with spirit and fun.  At last, while they were sipping their coffee, Hector spoke: 

“All this, my dear, is only a preface, intended to prepare you for a piece of news which will surprise you.  I am a ruined man.”

She looked at him with amazement, not seeming to comprehend him.

“I said—­ruined,” said he, laughing bitterly, “as ruined as man can be.”

“Oh, you are making fun of me, joking—­”

“I never spoke so seriously in my life.  It seems strange to you, doesn’t it?  Yet it’s sober truth.”