This act of suicide is partly explained by a supposed desire to be
appointed to some more lively and more lucrative consulate; but in this
the Beau was mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in accordance
with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in debt, and to
shift for himself. With the aid of an English tradesman, half grocer,
half banker, he managed to get through a period of his poverty, but
could not long subsist in this way, and the punishment of his vanity and
extravagance came at last in his old age. A term of existence in prison
did not cure him, and when he was liberated he again resumed his
primrose gloves, his Eau de Cologne, and his patent _vernis_ for his
boots, though at that time literally supported by his friends with an
allowance of £120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life this would
have been equal to £300 a year in England, and certainly quite enough
for any bachelor; but the Beau was really a fool. For whom, for what
should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place as Caen? Yet
he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the polish. When he
confessed to having, 'so help him Heaven,' not four francs in the world,
he was ordering this _vernis de Guiton_, at five francs a bottle, from
Paris, and calling the provider of it a 'scoundrel,' because he ventured
to ask for his money. What foppery, what folly was all this! How truly
worthy of the man who built his fame on the reputation of a coat!
Terrible indeed was the hardship that followed his extravagance; he was
actually compelled to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor
martyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. So,
too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer,
Armstrong, threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of
the pattern he wished to have.

Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went even before
his health. Though only some sixty years of age, almost the bloom of