The cashier was sitting there, motionless, among heaps of papers and great books, which he had been turning over, some of which had fallen to the floor.  At the sound of his employer’s footsteps he did not even lift his eyes.  He had recognized Risler’s step.  The latter, somewhat abashed, hesitated a moment; then, impelled by one of those secret springs which we have within us and which guide us, despite ourselves, in the path of our destiny, he walked straight to the cashier’s grating.

“Sigismond,” he said in a grave voice.

The old man raised his head and displayed a shrunken face down which two great tears were rolling, the first perhaps that that animate column of figures had ever shed in his life.

“You are weeping, old man?  What troubles you?”

And honest Risler, deeply touched, held out his hand to his friend, who hastily withdrew his.  That movement of repulsion was so instinctive, so brutal, that all Risler’s emotion changed to indignation.

He drew himself up with stern dignity.

“I offer you my hand, Sigismond Planus!” he said.

“And I refuse to take it,” said Planus, rising.

There was a terrible pause, during which they heard the muffled music of the orchestra upstairs and the noise of the ball, the dull, wearing noise of floors shaken by the rhythmic movement of the dance.

“Why do you refuse to take my hand?” demanded Risler simply, while the grating upon which he leaned trembled with a metallic quiver.

Sigismond was facing him, with both hands on his desk, as if to emphasize and drive home what he was about to say in reply.

“Why?  Because you have ruined the house; because in a few hours a messenger from the Bank will come and stand where you are, to collect a hundred thousand francs; and because, thanks to you, I haven’t a sou in the cash-box—­that’s the reason why!”

Risler was stupefied.

“I have ruined the house—­I?”

“Worse than that, Monsieur.  You have allowed it to be ruined by your wife, and you have arranged with her to benefit by our ruin and your dishonor.  Oh!  I can see your game well enough.  The money your wife has wormed out of the wretched Fromont, the house at Asnieres, the diamonds and all the rest is invested in her name, of course, out of reach of disaster; and of course you can retire from business now.”

“Oh—­oh!” exclaimed Risler in a faint voice, a restrained voice rather, that was insufficient for the multitude of thoughts it strove to express; and as he stammered helplessly he drew the grating toward him with such force that he broke off a piece of it.  Then he staggered, fell to the floor, and lay there motionless, speechless, retaining only, in what little life was still left in him, the firm determination not to die until he had justified himself.  That determination must have been very powerful; for while his temples throbbed madly, hammered by the blood that turned his face purple, while his ears were ringing and his glazed eyes seemed already turned toward the terrible unknown, the unhappy man muttered to himself in a thick voice, like the voice of a shipwrecked man speaking with his mouth full of water in a howling gale:  “I must live!  I must live!”