One night when he was supping at the Cafe-de Paris, he threw all the plates out the window.  It cost him twenty thousand francs.  Bravo!  One morning gossiping Paris learned with stupefaction that he had eloped to Italy with the wife of X—–­, the banker, a lady nineteen years married.  He fought a duel, and killed his man.  The week after, he was wounded in another.  He was a hero!  On one occasion he went to Baden, where he broke the bank.  Another time, after playing sixty hours, he managed to lose one hundred and twenty thousand francs—­won by a Russian prince.

He was one of those men whom success intoxicates, who long for applause, but who care not for what they are applauded.  Count Hector was more than ravished by the noise he made in the world.  It seemed to him the acme of honor and glory to have his name or initials constantly in the columns of the Parisian World.  He did not betray this, however, but said, with charming modesty, after each new adventure: 

“When will they stop talking about me?”

On great occasions, he borrowed from Louis XIV the epigram: 

“After me the deluge.”

The deluge came in his lifetime.

One April morning, his valet, a villainous fellow, drilled and dressed up by the count—­woke him at nine o’clock with this speech: 

“Monsieur, a bailiff is downstairs in the ante-chamber, and has come to seize your furniture.”

Hector turned on his pillow, yawned, stretched, and replied: 

“Well, tell him to begin operations with the stables and carriage-house; and then come up and dress me.”

He did not seem disturbed, and the servant retired amazed at his master’s coolness.  The count had at least sense enough to know the state of his finances; and he had foreseen, nay, expected the bailiff’s visit.  Three years before, when he had been laid up for six weeks in consequence of a fall from his horse, he had measured the depth of the gulf toward which he was hastening.  Then, he might yet have saved himself.  But he must have changed his whole course of life, reformed his household, learned that twenty-one franc pieces made a napoleon.  Fie, never!  After mature reflection he had said to himself that he would go on to the end.  When the last hour came, he would fly to the other end of France, erase his name from his linen, and blow his brains out in some forest.

This hour had now come.

By contracting debts, signing bills, renewing obligations, paying interests and compound interests, giving commissions by always borrowing, and never paying, Hector had consumed the princely heritage—­nearly four millions in lands—­which he had received at his father’s death.  The winter just past had cost him fifty thousand crowns.  He had tried eight days before to borrow a hundred thousand francs, and had failed.  He had been refused, not because his property was not as much as he owed, but because it was known that property sold by a bankrupt does not bring its value.