A Price for Folly

M. Jean de Segni, scion of a noble house, is notorious for his reckless extravagance and wild life, but on receiving word from his lawyers that he is ruined he takes it like a true gambler, with a shrug of the shoulders. Most of his money he has spent lavishly on a mercenary actress of great beauty, Dorothea Jardeau. The news of his ruin gets into the papers, and his father, who has managed to keep from his mother the kind of life Jean has been living, realizes she will soon know. He also knows that after his death Jean will gamble his mother into the poorhouse unless she dies of a broken heart first, for she idolizes her son. With little time left, the father decides to take his beloved wife with him, and he kills her. The butler discovers Jean with a stiletto in his hand at the body of his mother, but the Duke saves Jean from being accused of murder by confessing that he did it. Nevertheless, everyone, including his Dorothea, believes the Duke lied to save his son, and after his father's death Jean finds himself scorned and a social outcast without a single friend. After a row with a M. Landon, a duel is arranged, and Jean, on the field of honor, realizes his folly has killed his parents, and he fires in the air, receiving a mortal wound from his adversary. As he dies he confesses to Landon that indirectly he caused his parents' death, and that he considered it God's sentence that he be killed for his folly.