His life
for the past two months had been like the immortal finale of Mozart's
Don Giovanni; and of a truth, if a young man has come to such a plight
as Victurnien's, that finale is enough to make him shudder. Can
anything better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime
rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life wholly
give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate
effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil
luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The
terrific finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter,
its grisly spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal's
last effort made in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic
struggle which ends the drama. Victurnien was living through this
infernal poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself--a friendless,
solitary outcast, reading the words carved on the stone, the last
words on the last page of the book that had held him spellbound--THE
END!
Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Already he saw the
cold, ironical eyes which his associates would turn upon him, and
their amusement over his downfall. Some of them he knew were playing
high on that gambling-table kept open all day long at the Bourse, or
in private houses at the clubs, and anywhere and everywhere in Paris;
but not one of these men could spare a banknote to save an intimate.
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