BOOK II.



CHAPTER I.

THE HERO IN LONDON.--PLEASURE IS OFTEN THE SHORTEST, AS IT IS THE
EARLIEST ROAD TO WISDOM, AND WE MAY SAY OF THE WORLD WHAT
ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND-BUSY SAYS OF THE PIG-BOOTH, "WE ESCAPE SO MUCH OF THE
OTHER VANITIES BY OUR EARLY ENTERING."

IT had, when I first went to town, just become the fashion for young men
of fortune to keep house, and to give their bachelor establishments the
importance hitherto reserved for the household of a Benedict.

Let the reader figure to himself a suite of apartments, magnificently
furnished, in the vicinity of the court. An anteroom is crowded with
divers persons, all messengers in the various negotiations of pleasure.
There, a French valet,--that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,--sitting
over a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, and
conversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, though
with the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers who
were beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of
the master himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative.
There stood a tailor with his books of patterns just imported from
Paris,--that modern Prometheus, who makes a man what he is! Next to him
a tall, gaunt fellow, in a coat covered with tarnished lace, a night-cap
wig, and a large whip in his hands, comes to vouch for the pedigree and
excellence of the three horses he intends to dispose of, out of pure
love and amity for the buyer. By the window stood a thin starveling