grief had far more effect in depressing me than my pretended cheerfulness had in preventing her from giving way to utter despondency.
"We are ruined!" she cried, as the tears streamed from her eyes. In vain did I strive to console her by my caresses, for my own tears betrayed my consternation and despair. We were, in sober truth, so completely beggared that not a shred was left us save what we had on our backs.
I decided to send at once for M. Lescaut. He advised
me to go without delay to the Lieutenant of Police and the Provost-Marshal of Paris. I went, and, in going, I brought upon myself a still greater calamity. For not only was my own trouble and that to which I put these two officers of justice entirely barren of results, but I thus afforded Lescaut an opportunity of talking to his sister; and he took advantage of my absence to inspire her with an atrocious design. He told her of a certain M. de G——— M———, an old voluptuary who paid for his pleasures with a lavish hand; and so impressed her with the many advantages she would gain by earning his liberality, that—disturbed in mind as she was by our misfortune—she yielded a full assent to all his propositions.
