It is true that I am not an ungrateful audience; I worship the theatre." The commissary was not listening.

He was following up his own train of thought.
"It will never be known, how many fortunes and lives are devoured each year by the _pari mutuel_.

Gambling never releases its victims; when it has despoiled them of everything, it still remains their only hope.

What else, indeed, will permit them to hope ?" He ceased, straining his ear to catch the distant cry of a newsvendor, and rushed out into the avenue in pursuit of the fugitive yelping shadow, hailed him, and snatched from him a sporting paper, which he spread out under the light of a gas-lamp, scanning its pages for certain names of horses: _Fleur-des-pois_, _La Chatelaine_, _Lucrece_.

With haggard eyes, trembling hands, dumbfounded, crushed, he dropped the sheet: his horse had not won.
And Dr.Hibry, observing him from a distance, reflected that some day, in his capacity of physician to the dead, he might well be called upon to certify the suicide of his commissary of police, and he made up his mind in advance to conclude, as far as possible, that his death was due to accidental causes.
Suddenly he seized his umbrella.
"I must be off," he said.