so much Jansoulet would not give him at any price.  He spent his nights at the club, his mornings in bed, and from the moment he awoke his room was full of people who talked to him as he dressed, and to whom he replied, sponge in hand.  If, by a miracle, de Gery caught him alone for a second, he fled, stopping his words with a “Not now, not now, I beg of you.”  In the end the young man had recourse to drastic measures.

One morning, towards five o’clock, when Jansoulet came home from his club, he found a letter on the table near his bed.  At first he took it to be one of the many anonymous denunciations he received daily.  It was indeed a denunciation, but it was signed and undisguised; and it breathed in every word the loyalty and the earnest youthfulness of him who wrote it.  De Gery pointed out very clearly all the infamies and all the double dealing which surrounded him.  With no beating about the bush he called the rogues by their names.  There was not one of the usual guests whom he did not suspect, not one who came with any other object than to steal and to lie.  From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste.  Bois l’Hery’s horses were unsound, Schwalbach’s gallery was a swindle, Moessard’s articles a recognised blackmail.  De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it.  But he specially recommended to Jansoulet’s attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation.  Attracted by the Nabob’s name, as chairman of the company, hundreds of shareholders had fallen into the infamous trap—­poor seekers of gold, following the lucky miner.  In the other matters it was only money he lost; here his honour was at stake.  He would discover what a terrible responsibility lay upon him if he examined the papers of the business, which was only deception and cheatery from one end to the other.

“You will find the memorandum of which I speak,” said Paul de Gery, at the end of his letter, “in the top drawer of my desk along with sundry receipts.  I have not put them in your room, because I mistrust Noel like the rest.  When I go away to-night I will give you the key.  For I am going away, my dear benefactor and friend, I am going away full of gratitude for the good you have done me, and heartbroken that your blind confidence has prevented me from repaying you even in part.  As things are now, my conscience as an honest man will not let me stay any longer useless at my post.  I am looking on at a disaster, at the sack of a palace, which I can do nothing to prevent.  My heart burns at all I see.  I give handshakes which shame me.  I am your friend, and I seem their accomplice.  And who knows that if I went on living in such an atmosphere I might not become one?”

This letter, which he read slowly and carefully, even between the lines and through the words, made so great an impression on the Nabob that, instead of going to bed, he went at once to find his young secretary.  De Gery had a study at the end of the row of public rooms where he slept on a sofa.  It had been a provisional arrangement, but he had preferred not to change it.