balance which could possibly be his, since his liabilities vastly
exceeded his assets. Yet with a wave of the hand he accepted the roll of
bills, and signed the receipt with an air which said, "These forms must
be observed, I suppose."

What he would have done if the three hundred and fifty dollars had not
been given him, it would be hard to say, for with gentle asperity he had
declined a loan from his friend M. Fille, and he had but one silver
dollar in his pocket, or in the world. Indeed, Jean Jacques was living
in a dream in these dark days--a dream of renunciation and sacrifice, and
in the spirit of one who gives up all to some great cause. He was not
yet even face to face with the fulness of his disaster. Only at moments
had the real significance of it all come to him, and then he had shivered
as before some terror menacing his path. Also, as M. Mornay had said,
his philosophy was now in his bones and marrow rather than in his words.
It had, after all, tinctured his blood and impregnated his mind. He had
babbled and been the egotist, and played cock o' the walk; and now at
last his philosophy was giving some foundation for his feet. Yet at
this auction-sale he looked a distracted, if smiling, whimsical, rather
bustling figure of misfortune, with a tragic air of exile, of isolation
from all by which he was surrounded. A profound and wayworn loneliness
showed in his figure, in his face, in his eyes.

The crowd thinned in time, and yet very many lingered to see the last of
this drama of lost fortunes. A few of the riff-raff, who invariably
attend these public scenes, were now rather the worse for drink, from the
indifferent liquor provided by the auctioneer, and they were inclined to
horseplay and coarse chaff. More than one ribald reference to Jean
Jacques had been checked by his chivalrous fellow-citizens; indeed, M.
Fille had almost laid himself open to a charge of assault in his own