This had failed.

He had not been able to pay the interest on his mortgages, and the ready money was all gone.

A disastrous financial crisis had supervened, which had made itself felt throughout the country, and the banks which held the mortgages had given notice that they would foreclose some of them, and not renew the others.

If Gregorio Macomer could have laid hands, no matter how, on any sum of money worth mentioning, he would have fled, under an assumed name, to the Argentine Republic, the usual refuge of Italians in difficulties.

But he had exhausted all he could touch, had gambled, and had lost it.