“You don’t know women, my good Mathias,” said Paul.  “In order to be happy we must love them as they want to be loved.  Isn’t there something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and spoiling her beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?”

“If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them.”

“If you were right, dear friend,” said Paul, frowning, “I should be still more unhappy than I am.  Do not aggravate my sufferings by preaching to me after my fall.  Let me go, without the pang of looking backward to my mistakes.”

The next day Mathias received a bill of exchange for one hundred and fifty thousand francs from de Marsay.

“You see,” said Paul, “he does not write a word to me.  He begins by obliging me.  Henri’s nature is the most imperfectly perfect, the most illegally beautiful that I know.  If you knew with what superiority that man, still young, can rise above sentiments, above self-interests, and judge them, you would be astonished, as I am, to find how much heart he has.”

Mathias tried to battle with Paul’s determination, but he found it irrevocable, and it was justified by so many cogent reasons that the old man finally ceased his endeavors to retain his client.

It is seldom that vessels sail promptly at the time appointed, but on this occasion, by a fateful circumstance for Paul, the wind was fair and the “Belle-Amelie” sailed on the morrow, as expected.  The quay was lined with relations, and friends, and idle persons.  Among them were several who had formerly known Manerville.  His disaster, posted on the walls of the town, made him as celebrated as he was in the days of his wealth and fashion.  Curiosity was aroused; every one had their word to say about him.  Old Mathias accompanied his client to the quay, and his sufferings were sore as he caught a few words of those remarks:—­

“Who could recognize in that man you see over there, near old Mathias, the dandy who was called the Pink of Fashion five years ago, and made, as they say, ‘fair weather and foul’ in Bordeaux.”

“What! that stout, short man in the alpaca overcoat, who looks like a groom,—­is that Comte Paul de Manerville?”

“Yes, my dear, the same who married Mademoiselle Evangelista.  Here he is, ruined, without a penny to his name, going out to India to look for luck.”

“But how did he ruin himself? he was very rich.”

“Oh!  Paris, women, play, luxury, gambling at the Bourse—­”

“Besides,” said another, “Manerville always was a poor creature; no mind, soft as papier-mache, he’d let anybody shear the wool from his back; incapable of anything, no matter what.  He was born to be ruined.”