The million five hundred thousand folks in Paris, who went about their pleasures that October night, knew little of the sorrows of the Southern Colony.

Pisgah dropped in at the Chateau des Fleurs to beg [Pg 21]a paltry loan from some ancient favorite. The time had been, when, after a nightly debauch, he had placed two hundred francs in her morning's coffee-cup. It was mournful now to mark his premature gray hairs, as, resting his soiled, faded coat-sleeve upon her manteau de velour, he saw the scorn of his poverty in the bright eyes which had smiled upon him, and made his request so humbly and so feverishly.

[Pg 21]

"Give me back, Feefine," he faltered, "only that fifty francs I once tied in a gold band about your spaniel's neck. I am poor, my dear—that will not move you, I know, but I am going to Germany to play at the banks; if I win, I swear to pay you back ten francs for one!"

There was never a lorette who did not love to gamble. She stopped a passing gentleman and borrowed the money; the other saw it transferred to Pisgah, with an expression of contempt, and, turning to a friend, called him aloud a withering name.

Poor Pisgah! he would have drawn his bowie-knife once, and defied even the emperor to stand between the man and himself after such an appellation. He would have esteemed it a favor now to be what he was named, and only lifted his creased beaver gratefully, and hobbled nervously away, and stopping near by at a café drank a great glass of absinthe, with almost a prayerful heart.

At Mr. Simp's hotel in the Rue Monsieur Le Prince much business was transacted after dark. Monsieurs Freckle and Plade were engaged in smuggling away certain relics of furniture and wearing apparel.

Mr. Simp already owed his landlord fifteen months'[Pg 22] rent, for which the only security was his diminishing effects.

[Pg 22]

If the mole-eyed concierge should suspect foul play with these, Simp would be turned out of doors immediately and the property confiscated.

Singly and in packages the collateral made its exit. A half-dozen regal chemises made to order at fifty francs apiece; a musical clock picked up at Genoa for twelve louis; a patent boot-jack and an ebony billiard cue; a Paduan violin; two statuettes of more fidelity than modesty, to be sold pound for pound at the current value of bronze; divers 

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