As for him, he had thrown Simonne over.

His Bosphorous scheme was getting shaky, and Nana hastened the downfall by wild expenses.

For a month he struggled on, doing miracles of finance.
He filled Europe with posters, advertisements and prospectuses of a colossal scheme and obtained money from the most distant climes.

All these savings, the pounds of speculators and the pence of the poor, were swallowed up in the Avenue de Villiers.

Again he was partner in an ironworks in Alsace, where in a small provincial town workmen, blackened with coal dust and soaked with sweat, day and night strained their sinews and heard their bones crack to satisfy Nana's pleasures.