Last scion of a great family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which nothing could appease.

His racing stable, which was one of the best known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his vast estates in Picardy.
"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little space in which to sit down at her side.
"It's you who spoil your own pleasures." "Exactly," he replied.

"I wish to make others benefit by my experience." But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.Venot.
And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in the depths of an easy chair.

There he sat as comfortably as in his own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.

With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.