a blemish on his character. He had been indiscreet in entering heedlessly
upon so large an undertaking, and must pay dearly for that in discretion.
He was strictly liable and bound to pay what he had acknowledged with his
hand to be a lawful debt. There was no help for him. The young man was
worthy of commiseration, and his creditors should show him mercy." This
was the verdict of the commissioner, spoken in the ears of one who was a
stranger to mercy, and who had vowed to show me _none_. Guilt, however,
attached to my good name no longer, and I smiled at his malignity. It was
too soon _to smile_. The secret of all my difficulty was now explained.
Trading upon a false capital, to an extravagant extent beyond the real
one--draining my exchequer of its resources to pay an ever-recurring
interest, whilst the principal was but a fiction in the estate, it was no
wonder that I became hemmed in by claims impossible to meet, and that the
services of Mr Gilbert were so soon in requisition. In giving to Mr
Gilbert a power over the firm, I acted according to my ideas of justice.
When I was impoverished, he furnished me with the means of keeping up the
credit of the house. But for him it must have fallen. I believed that I
was solvent. Why should I hesitate to make this man secure? But it is for
this preference, which rendered my uncle's dividend comparatively nothing,
that I have been followed through my life with rancour and malevolence
unparalleled. Mark me, sir; the _mistake_, as it was called--the vital
_error_--was a deliberate fraud committed by my uncle at the outset.

He had withdrawn this heavy sum of money at the beginning--he had resolved
to keep me for my life his servant and his slave--to feast upon the
dropping sweat of my exhausted mind--to convert my heart's blood into
gold, which was his god. He hated me for my conduct towards him in my
boyhood, which he had neither forgotten nor forgiven; and his detestation
gave zest to his hellish desire of accumulating wealth at any cost. Had I
applied to _him_, had I entered into new engagements with _him_, given to