In a Glass Darkly, v. 2/3

was plain, however, that the cadaverous gentleman who had just apostrophized the heraldry of the Count's carriage, with such mysterious

, almost at our elbow. In this case, the effect was enhanced by the extreme repulsiveness of the face, and, I may add, its proximity, for, as I think, it almost touched mine. The eni

ell what lights the gossip of the supper-table might t

the little assembly, about thirty people, f

ls up to one's private apartments, in the midst of this unparalleled confusion; and, therefore, many people wh

expected to see in so public a place, signed, with a significant smile, to a vacant chair beside hi

your first visit t

it was, a

erous capital a high-spirited and generous young gentleman could visit without a Ment

een a good deal of life in England, and that, I fancied, human nature was prett

iar. In Paris, the class who live by their wits, is three or four times as great as in London; and they live much better; some of them even splendidly. They are more ingenious than the London rogues; they have more animation, and invention, and the dra

of our Lon

ore elaborately done, and with a really exquisite finesse. There are people whose manners, style, conversation, are unexceptionable, living in handsome houses in the best situations, with everything about them in the most refined taste, and exquisitely luxurious, who impose even upon the Parisian bourgeois, who believe them to be, in good faith, people of rank and fashion, be

, a son of Lord Rooksbury, who broke tw

carry all before me by the simple expedient of going on doubling my stakes. I had heard of it, and I fancied that the sharpers, who kept the table, knew nothing of the matter. I found, however, that they not only knew a

n force still?" I i

e who live by an art, always understand it better than an amateur

n a still grander scale. I had arrived with

; and, besides my regard for him, I am charmed with you; so you

counsel, and begged that he would have the g

be the private mansions of persons of distinction, and was saved from ruin by a gentleman, whom, ever since, I have regarded with increasing respect and friendship. It oddly happens he is in this house at this moment. I recognized his servant, and made him a visit in his apartments here, and found him the same brave, kind, honourable man I always knew him

" I hesitated. I was

and-forty years younger than himself, and is, of course, al

the l

every way worthy of so good a ma

ard her sing

accomplished." After a few

l him you had been pigeoned in Paris. A rich Englishman as you are, with so large a sum at his Paris bankers, yo

from the elbow of the gentleman at my right. It

here is no man's flesh in this

I looked round and recognised the officer, whose large white face had half scared me

ne-draw an old-coat. Parbleu! gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would laugh? Look at my hand, a sabre-cut across the palm, to the bone, to save my head, taken up with three stitches, and five days afterwards I was playing ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all, in this room! I received, at the sa

talian, who manufactured tooth-picks and wicker cradles on the island of Notre Dame; "your explo

d lost enough to fill a pitcher. I must have expired in another minute, if I had not whipped off my sash like a flash of lightning, tied it round my leg above the wound, whipt a bayonet out of the back of a dead Prussian, and passing it under, made a tournequet of it with a c

and looked resigned and disgust

the waiter; "who came in that travelling carriage, dark yellow and black, that stands in the middle

er could

and serious, and seemed to have abandoned the general conversa

ning the panel of that carriage at the same time that I

he Count and Coun

e, in the Belle E

partments upstai

own again, and I could hear him sacré-ing and muttering to himself, and g

ut he was gone. Several other people had droppe

had turned out chilly. I sat down by the fire in a great arm-chair, of carved

o you happen to know

onel Gaillar

been oft

ieur, for a week;

palest man

ur; he has been often

a bottle of reall

in France,

e, on this table, if you please.

nly, Mo

houghts glowing and serene. "Beautiful Countess! Bea